> It's both hard for human to format correctly, and for library creator to make a compliant parser.

It is actually very easy to format correctly, unless you don't understand the format. While it may challenging to make a compliant parser, many exists for multiple languages.

JSON isn't a viable replacement.. TOML doesn't support root level lists and has its own set of challenges and is a lot more ugly and difficult to understand for complex nested structures.

If you want to kill YAML then replace it with HCL.

TOML is atrocious. In trying to look ini-like its table and nested structures become completely inscrutable.

I only ever deal with it by writing what I need in YAML and running a converter.

Agreed. I think HCL would make a nice replacement though.

What’s HCL?

It seems to be a HashiCorp Configuration Language, HashiCorp being the creators/sponsors of terraform (I don't know much about terraform or hashicorp)

I have the same problems as you. For some reason I can't work in that type of format (similarly with Python).

No beef against those that love it, my brain just can't handle it.

Meh. It’s ok. I’ve used it in many projects and languages while never caring about and being able to find an OSS parser in all languages.

Most people I know have had an issue where they misunderstood what an object in a YAML file is (and therefore did not apply a configuration) or something similar.

Bonus points for mis-editing a kube object (kubectl edit) that you save correctly only to realize that mis-formatted YAML can get thrown away without reporting an error back (looking at you Istio).

And yet people choose it again and again for new projects. Someone must love it given the popularity...