JSON、XML、TOML、CSON、YAML 大比拼
XML JSON YAML
![](/data/attachment/album/201903/29/011449ffhh8gydrzbthadg.jpg)


### 一段超级严肃的关于样本序列化的集合、子集和超集的文字


我是一名开发者，我读代码，我写代码，我写会写代码的代码，我写会写出供其它代码读的代码的代码。这些都非常火星语，但是有其美妙之处。然而，最后一点，写会写出供其它代码读的代码的代码，可以很快变得比这段文字更费解。有很多方法可以做到这一点。一种不那么复杂而且开发者社区最爱的方式是数据序列化。对于那些不了解我刚刚抛给你的时髦词的人，数据序列化是从一个系统获取一些信息，将其转换为其它系统可以读取的格式，然后将其传递给其它系统的过程。


虽然[数据序列化格式](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data_serialization_formats)多到可以埋葬哈利法塔，但它们大多分为两类：


* 易于人类读写，
* 易于机器读写。


很难两全其美，因为人类喜欢让我们更具表现力的松散类型和灵活格式标准，而机器倾向于被确切告知一切事情而没有二义性和细节缺失，并且认为“严格规范”才是它们最爱的口味。


由于我是一名 web 开发者，而且我们是一个创建网站的机构，我们将坚持使用 web 系统可以理解或不需要太多努力就能理解的特殊格式，而且对人类可读性特别有用的格式：XML、JSON、TOML、CSON 以及 YAML。每个都有各自的优缺点和适当的用例场景。


### 事实最先


回到互联网的早期，[一些非常聪明的家伙](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language#History)决定整合一种让每个系统都能理解的标准语言，并创造性地将其命名为<ruby> 标准通用标记语言 <rt>  Standard Generalized Markup Language </rt></ruby>（简称 SGML）。SGML 非常灵活，发布者也很好地定义了它。它成为了 XML、SVG 和 HTML 等语言之父。所有这三个都符合 SGML 规范，可是它们都是规则更严格、灵活性更少的子集。


最终，人们开始看到非常小、简洁、易读且易于生成的数据的好处，这些数据可以在系统之间以编程的方式共享，而开销很小。大约在那个时候，JSON 诞生了并且能够满足所有的需求。而另一方面，其它语言也开始出现以处理更多的专业用例，如 CSON，TOML 和 YAML。


### XML：不行了


原本，XML 语言非常灵活且易于编写，但它的缺点是冗长，人类难以阅读、计算机非常难以读取，并且有很多语法对于传达信息并不是完全必要的。


今天，它在 web 上的数据序列化的用途已经消失了。除非你在编写 HTML 或者 SVG，否则你不太能在许多其它地方看到 XML。一些过时的系统今天仍在使用它，但是用它传递数据往往太重了。


我已经可以听到 XML 老爷爷开始在它们的石碑上乱写为什么 XML 是了不起的，所以我将提供一个小小的补充：XML 可以很容易地由系统和人读写。然而，真的，我的意思是荒谬的，很难创建一个可以规范的读取它的系统。这是一个简单美观的 XML 示例：



```
<book id="bk101">
<author>Gambardella, Matthew</author>
<title>XML Developer's Guide</title>
<genre>Computer</genre>
<price>44.95</price>
<publish_date>2000-10-01</publish_date>
<description>An in-depth look at creating applications
with XML.</description>
</book>
```

太棒了。易于阅读、理解、写入，也容易编码一个可以读写它的系统。但请考虑这个例子：



```
<!DOCTYPE r [ <!ENTITY y "a]>b"> ]>
<r>
<a b="&y;>" />
<![CDATA[[a>b <a>b <a]]>
<?x <a> <!-- <b> ?> c --> d
</r>
```

这上面是 100% 有效的 XML。几乎不可能阅读、理解或推理。编写可以使用和理解这个的代码将花费至少 36 根头发和 248 磅咖啡渣。我们没有那么多时间或咖啡，而且我们大多数老程序员们现在都是秃头。所以，让它活在我们的记忆里，就像 [css hacks](https://www.quirksmode.org/css/csshacks.html)、[IE 6 浏览器](http://www.ie6death.com/) 和[真空管](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube)一样好了。


### JSON：并列聚会


好吧，我们都同意，XML = 差劲。那么，好的替代品是什么？<ruby> JavaScript 对象表示法 <rt>  JavaScript Object Notation </rt></ruby>，简称 JSON。JSON（读起来像 Jason 这个名字） 是 Brendan Eich 发明的，并且得到了伟大而强力的 [JavaScript 意见领袖](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/773403975865470976) Douglas Crockford 的推广。它现在几乎用在任何地方。这种格式很容易由人和机器编写，按规范中的严格规则[解析](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing#Parser)也相当容易，并且灵活 —— 允许深层嵌套数据，支持所有的原始数据类型，及将集合解释为数组或对象。JSON 成为了将数据从一个系统传输到另一个系统的事实标准。几乎所有语言都有内置读写它的功能。


JSON语法很简单。方括号表示数组，花括号表示记录，由冒号分隔的两个值分别表示属性或“键”（在左边）、值（在右边）。所有键必须用双引号括起来：



```
  {
    "books": [
      {
        "id": "bk102",
        "author": "Crockford, Douglas",
        "title": "JavaScript: The Good Parts",
        "genre": "Computer",
        "price": 29.99,
        "publish_date": "2008-05-01",
        "description": "Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript"
      }
    ]
  }
```

这对你来说应该是完全有意义的。它简洁明了，并且从 XML 中删除了大量额外废话，并传达相同数量的信息。JSON 现在是王道，本文剩下的部分会介绍其它语言格式，这些格式只不过是 JSON 的简化版，尝试让其更简洁或对人类更易读，可结构还是非常相似的。


### TOML: 缩短到彻底的利他主义


TOML（<ruby> Tom 的显而易见的最小化语言 <rt>  Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language </rt></ruby>）允许以相当快捷、简洁的方式定义深层嵌套的数据结构。名字中的 Tom 是指发明者 [Tom Preston Werner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Preston-Werner)，他是一位活跃于我们行业的创造者和软件开发人员。与 JSON 相比，语法有点尴尬，更类似 [ini 文件](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file)。这不是一个糟糕的语法，但是需要一些时间适应。



```
[[books]]
id = 'bk101'
author = 'Crockford, Douglas'
title = 'JavaScript: The Good Parts'
genre = 'Computer'
price = 29.99
publish_date = 2008-05-01T00:00:00+00:00
description = 'Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript'
```

TOML 中集成了一些很棒的功能，例如多行字符串、保留字符的自动转义、日期、时间、整数、浮点数、科学记数法和“表扩展”等数据类型。最后一点是特别的，是 TOML 如此简洁的原因：



```
[a.b.c]
d = 'Hello'
e = 'World'
```

以上扩展到以下内容：



```
{
  "a": { 
    "b": {
      "c": { 
        "d": "Hello"
        "e": "World"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

使用 TOML，你可以肯定在时间和文件长度上会节省不少。很少有系统使用它或非常类似的东西作为配置，这是它最大的缺点。根本没有很多语言或库可以用来解释 TOML。


### CSON: 特定系统所包含的简单样本


首先，有两个 CSON 规范。 一个代表 CoffeeScript Object Notation，另一个代表 Cursive Script Object Notation。后者不经常使用，所以我们不会关注它。我们只关注 CoffeeScript。


[CSON](https://github.com/bevry/cson#what-is-cson) 需要一点介绍。首先，我们来谈谈 CoffeeScript。[CoffeeScript](http://coffeescript.org/) 是一种通过运行编译器生成 JavaScript 的语言。它允许你以更加简洁的语法编写 JavaScript 并[转译](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler)成实际的 JavaScript，然后你可以在你的 web 应用程序中使用它。CoffeeScript 通过删除 JavaScript 中必需的许多额外语法，使编写 JavaScript 变得更容易。CoffeeScript 摆脱的一个大问题是花括号 —— 不需要它们。同样，CSON 是没有大括号的 JSON。它依赖于缩进来确定数据的层次结构。CSON 非常易于读写，并且通常比 JSON 需要更少的代码行，因为没有括号。


CSON 还提供一些 JSON 不提供的额外细节。多行字符串非常容易编写，你可以通过使用 `#` 符号开始一行来输入[注释](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comment_(computer_programming))，并且不需要用逗号分隔键值对。



```
books: [
  id: 'bk102'
  author: 'Crockford, Douglas'
  title: 'JavaScript: The Good Parts'
  genre: 'Computer'
  price: 29.99
  publish_date: '2008-05-01'
  description: 'Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript'
]
```

这是 CSON 的大问题。它是 <ruby> CoffeScript 对象表示法 <rt>  CoffeeScript Object Notation </rt></ruby>。也就是说你要用 CoffeeScript 解析/标记化/lex/转译或其它方式来使用 CSON。CoffeeScript 是读取数据的系统。如果数据序列化的目的是允许数据从一个系统传递到另一个系统，这里我们有一个只能由单个系统读取的数据序列化格式，这使得它与防火火柴、防水海绵或者叉匙恼人的脆弱叉子部分一样有用。


如果这种格式被其它系统也采用，那它在开发者世界中可能非常有用。但到目前为止这基本上没有发生，所以在 PHP 或 JAVA 等替代语言中使用它是不行的。


### YAML：年轻人的呼喊


开发人员感到高兴，因为 YAML 来自[一个 Python 的贡献者](http://clarkevans.com/)。YAML 具有与 CSON 相同的功能集和类似的语法，有一系列新功能，以及几乎所有 web 编程语言都可用的解析器。它还有一些额外的功能，如循环引用、软包装、多行键、类型转换标签、二进制数据、对象合并和[集合映射](http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_maps-sets.html)。它具有非常好的可读性和可写性，并且是 JSON 的超集，因此你可以在 YAML 中使用完全合格的 JSON 语法并且一切正常工作。你几乎不需要引号，它可以解释大多数基本数据类型（字符串、整数、浮点数、布尔值等）。



```
books:
  - id: bk102
  author: Crockford, Douglas
  title: 'JavaScript: The Good Parts'
  genre: Computer
  price: 29.99
  publish_date: !!str 2008-05-01
  description: Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript
```

业界的年轻人正在迅速采用 YAML 作为他们首选的数据序列化和系统配置格式。他们这样做很机智。YAML 具有像 CSON 一样简洁的所有好处，以及与 JSON 一样的数据类型解释的所有功能。YAML 像加拿大人容易相处一样容易阅读。


YAML 有两个问题，对我而言，第一个是大问题。在撰写本文时，YAML 解析器尚未内置于多种语言，因此你需要使用第三方库或扩展来为你选择的语言解析 .yaml 文件。这不是什么大问题，可似乎大多数为 YAML 创建解析器的开发人员都选择随机将“附加功能”放入解析器中。有些允许[标记化](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/compiler_design/compiler_design_lexical_analysis.htm)，有些允许[链引用](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface)，有些甚至允许内联计算。这一切都很好（某种意义上），只是这些功能都不是规范的一部分，因此很难在其他语言的其他解析器中找到。这导致系统限定，你最终遇到了与 CSON 相同的问题。如果你使用仅在一个解析器中找到的功能，则其他解析器将无法解释输入。大多数这些功能都是无意义的，不属于数据集，而是属于你的应用程序逻辑，因此最好简单地忽略它们和编写符合规范的 YAML。


第二个问题是很少有解析器完全实现规范。所有的基本要素都有，但是很难找到一些更复杂和更新的东西，比如软包装、文档标记和首选语言的循环引用。我还没有看到对这些东西的刚需，所以希望它们不让你很失望。考虑到上述情况，我倾向于保持 [1.1 规范](http://yaml.org/spec/1.1/current.html) 中呈现的更成熟的功能集，而避免在 [1.2 规范](http://www.yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html) 中找到的新东西。然而，编程是一个不断发展的怪兽，所以当你读完这篇文章时，你或许就可以使用 1.2 规范了。


### 最终哲学


这是最后一段话。每个序列化语言都应该以个案标准的方式评价。当涉及机器的可读性时，有些<ruby> 无出其右 <rt>  the bee’s knees </rt></ruby>。对于人类可读性，有些<ruby> 名至实归 <rt>  the cat’s meow </rt></ruby>，有些只是<ruby> 金玉其外 <rt>  gilded turds </rt></ruby>。以下是最终细分：如果你要编写供其他代码阅读的代码，请使用 YAML。如果你正在编写能写出供其他代码读取的代码的代码，请使用 JSON。最后，如果你正在编写将代码转译为供其他代码读取的代码的代码，请重新考虑你的人生选择。




---


via: <https://www.zionandzion.com/json-vs-xml-vs-toml-vs-cson-vs-yaml/>


作者：[Tim Anderson](https://www.zionandzion.com) 选题：[lujun9972](https://github.com/lujun9972) 译者：[GraveAccent](https://github.com/GraveAccent) 校对：[wxy](https://github.com/wxy)


本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出


OK
## A Super Serious Segment About Sets, Subsets, and Supersets of Sample Serialization

I’m a developer. I read code. I write code. I write code that writes code. I write code that writes code for other code to read. It’s all very mumbo-jumbo, but beautiful in its own way. However, that last bit, writing code that writes code for other code to read, can get more convoluted than this paragraph—quickly. There are a lot of ways to do it. One not-so-convoluted way and a favorite among the developer community is through data serialization. For those who aren’t savvy on the super buzzword I just threw at you, data serialization is the process of taking some information from one system, churning it into a format that other systems can read, and then passing it along to those other systems.

While there are enough [data serialization formats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data_serialization_formats) out there to bury the Burj Khalifa, they all mostly fall into two categories:

- simplicity for humans to read and write,
- and simplicity for machines to read and write.

It’s difficult to have both as we humans enjoy loosely typed, flexible formatting standards that allow us to be more expressive, whereas machines tend to enjoy being told exactly what everything is without doubt or lack of detail, and consider “strict specifications” to be their favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry’s.

Since I’m a web developer and we’re an agency who creates websites, we’ll stick to those special formats that web systems can understand, or be made to understand without much effort, and that are particularly useful for human readability: XML, JSON, TOML, CSON, and YAML. Each has benefits, cons, and appropriate use cases.

## Facts First

Back in the early days of the interwebs, [some really smart fellows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language#History) decided to put together a standard language which every system could read and creatively named it Standard Generalized Markup Language, or SGML for short. SGML was incredibly flexible and well defined by its publishers. It became the father of languages such as XML, SVG, and HTML. All three fall under the SGML specification, but are subsets with stricter rules and shorter flexibility.

Eventually, people started seeing a great deal of benefit in having very small, concise, easy to read, and easy to generate data that could be shared programmatically between systems with very little overhead. Around that time, JSON was born and was able to fulfil all requirements. In turn, other languages began popping up to deal with more specialized cases such as CSON, TOML, and YAML.

## XML: Ixnayed

Originally, the XML language was amazingly flexible and easy to write, but its drawback was that it was verbose, difficult for humans to read, really difficult for computers to read, and had a lot of syntax that wasn’t entirely necessary to communicate information.

Today, it’s all but dead for data serialization purposes on the web. Unless you’re writing HTML or SVG, both siblings to XML, you probably aren’t going to see XML in too many other places. Some outdated systems still use it today, but using it to pass data around tends to be overkill for the web.

I can already hear the XML greybeards beginning to scribble upon their stone tablets as to why XML is ah-may-zing, so I’ll provide a small addendum: XML *can* be easy to read and write by systems and people. However, it is really, and I mean ridiculously, hard to create a system that can read it to specification. Here’s a simple, beautiful example of XML:

```
<book id="bk101">
<author>Gambardella, Matthew</author>
<title>XML Developer's Guide</title>
<genre>Computer</genre>
<price>44.95</price>
<publish_date>2000-10-01</publish_date>
<description>An in-depth look at creating applications
with XML.</description>
</book>
```


Wonderful. Easy to read, reason about, write, and code a system that can read and write. But consider this example:

```
<!DOCTYPE r [ <!ENTITY y "a]>b"> ]>
<r>
<a b="&y;>" />
<![CDATA[[a>b <a>b <a]]>
<?x <a> <!-- <b> ?> c --> d
</r>
```


The above is 100% valid XML. Impossible to read, understand, or reason about. Writing code that can consume and understand this would cost at least 36 heads of hair and 248 pounds of coffee grounds. We don’t have that kind of time nor coffee, and most of us greybeards are balding nowadays. So let’s let it live only in our memory alongside [css hacks](https://www.quirksmode.org/css/csshacks.html), [internet explorer 6](http://www.ie6death.com/), and [vacuum tubes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube).

## JSON: Juxtaposition Jamboree

Okay, we’re all in agreement. XML = bad. So, what’s a good alternative? JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON for short. JSON (read like the name Jason) was invented by Brendan Eich, and made popular by the great and powerful Douglas Crockford, the [Dutch Uncle of JavaScript](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/773403975865470976). It’s used just about everywhere nowadays. The format is easy to write by both human and machine, fairly easy to [parse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing#Parser) with strict rules in the specification, and flexible—allowing deep nesting of data, all of the primitive data types, and interpretation of collections as either arrays or objects. JSON became the de facto standard for transferring data from one system to another. Nearly every language out there has built-in functionality for reading and writing it.

JSON syntax is straightforward. Square brackets denote arrays, curly braces denote records, and two values separated by semicolons denote properties (or ‘keys’) on the left, and values on the right. All keys must be wrapped in double quotes:

```
{
"books": [
{
"id": "bk102",
"author": "Crockford, Douglas",
"title": "JavaScript: The Good Parts",
"genre": "Computer",
"price": 29.99,
"publish_date": "2008-05-01",
"description": "Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript"
}
]
}
```


This should make complete sense to you. It’s nice and concise, and has stripped much of the extra nonsense from XML to convey the same amount of information. JSON is king right now, and the rest of this article will go into other language formats that are nothing more than JSON boiled down in an attempt to be either more concise or more readable by humans, but follow very similar structure.

## TOML: Truncated to Total Altruism

TOML (Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language) allows for defining deeply-nested data structures rather quickly and succinctly. The name-in-the-name refers to the inventor, [Tom Preston-Werner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Preston-Werner), an inventor and software developer who’s active in our industry. The syntax is a bit awkward when compared to JSON, and is more akin to an [ini file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file). It’s not a bad syntax, but could take some getting used to:

```
[[books]]
id = 'bk101'
author = 'Crockford, Douglas'
title = 'JavaScript: The Good Parts'
genre = 'Computer'
price = 29.99
publish_date = 2008-05-01T00:00:00+00:00
description = 'Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript'
```


A couple great features have been integrated into TOML, such as multiline strings, auto-escaping of reserved characters, datatypes such as dates, time, integers, floats, scientific notation, and “table expansion”. That last bit is special, and is what makes TOML so concise:

```
[a.b.c]
d = 'Hello'
e = 'World'
```


The above expands to the following:

```
{
"a": {
"b": {
"c": {
"d": "Hello"
"e": "World"
}
}
}
}
```


You can definitely see how much you can save in both time and file length using TOML. There are few systems which use it or something very similar for configuration, and that is its biggest con. There simply aren’t very many languages or libraries out there written to interpret TOML.

## CSON: Simple Samples Enslaved by Specific Systems

First off, there are two CSON specifications. One stands for CoffeeScript Object Notation, the other stands for Cursive Script Object Notation. The latter isn’t used too often, so we won’t be getting into it. Let’s just focus on the CoffeeScript one.

[CSON](https://github.com/bevry/cson#what-is-cson) will take a bit of intro. First, let’s talk about CoffeeScript. [CoffeeScript](http://coffeescript.org/) is a language that runs through a compiler to generate JavaScript. It allows you to write JavaScript in a more syntactically concise way, and have it [transcompiled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler) into actual JavaScript, which you would then use in your web application. CoffeeScript makes writing JavaScript easier by removing a lot of the extra syntax necessary in JavaScript. A big one that CoffeeScript gets rid of is curly braces—no need for them. In that same token, CSON is JSON without the curly braces. It instead relies on indentation to determine hierarchy of your data. CSON is very easy to read and write and usually requires fewer lines of code than JSON because there are no brackets.

CSON also offers up some extra niceties that JSON doesn’t have to offer. Multiline strings are incredibly easy to write, you can enter [comments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comment_(computer_programming)) by starting a line with a hash, and there’s no need for separating key-value pairs with commas.

```
books: [
id: 'bk102'
author: 'Crockford, Douglas'
title: 'JavaScript: The Good Parts'
genre: 'Computer'
price: 29.99
publish_date: '2008-05-01'
description: 'Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript'
]
```


Here’s the big issue with CSON. It’s ** CoffeeScript **Object Notation. Meaning CoffeeScript is what you use to parse/tokenize/lex/transcompile or otherwise use CSON. CoffeeScript is the system that reads the data. If the intent of data serialization is to allow data to be passed from one system to another, and here we have a data serialization format that’s only read by a single system, well that makes it about as useful as a fireproof match, or a waterproof sponge, or that annoyingly flimsy fork part of a spork.

If this format is adopted by other systems, it could be pretty useful in the developer world. Thus far that hasn’t happened in a comprehensive manner, so using it in alternative languages such as PHP or JAVA are a no-go.

## YAML: Yielding Yips from Youngsters

Developers rejoice, as YAML comes into the scene from [one of the contributors to Python](http://clarkevans.com/). YAML has the same feature set and similar syntax as CSON, a boatload of new features, and parsers available in just about every web programming language there is. It also has some extra features, like circular referencing, soft-wraps, multi-line keys, typecasting tags, binary data, object merging, and [set maps](http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_maps-sets.html). It has incredibly good human readability and writability, and is a superset of JSON, so you can use fully qualified JSON syntax inside YAML and all will work well. You almost never need quotes, and it can interpret most of your base data types (strings, integers, floats, booleans, etc.).

```
books:
- id: bk102
author: Crockford, Douglas
title: 'JavaScript: The Good Parts'
genre: Computer
price: 29.99
publish_date: !!str 2008-05-01
description: Unearthing the Excellence in JavaScript
```


The younglings of the industry are rapidly adopting YAML as their preferred data serialization and system configuration format. They are smart to do so. YAML has all the benefits of being as terse as CSON, and all the features of datatype interpretation as JSON. YAML is as easy to read as Canadians are to hang out with.

There are two issues with YAML that stick out to me, and the first is a big one. At the time of this writing, YAML parsers haven’t yet been built into very many languages, so you’ll need to use a third-party library or extension for your chosen language to parse .yaml files. This wouldn’t be a big deal, however it seems most developers who’ve created parsers for YAML have chosen to throw “additional features” into their parsers at random. Some allow [tokenization](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/compiler_design/compiler_design_lexical_analysis.htm), some allow [chain referencing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface), some even allow inline calculations. This is all well and good (sort of), except that none of these features are part of the specification, and so are difficult to find amongst other parsers in other languages. This results in system-locking; you end up with the same issue that CSON is subject to. If you use a feature found in only one parser, other parsers won’t be able to interpret the input. Most of these features are nonsense that don’t belong in a dataset, but rather in your application logic, so it’s best to simply ignore them and write your YAML to specification.

The second issue is there are few parsers that yet completely implement the specification. All the basics are there, but it can be difficult to find some of the more complex and newer things like soft-wraps, document markers, and circular references in your preferred language. I have yet to see an absolute need for these things, so hopefully they shouldn’t slow you down too much. With the above considered, I tend to keep to the more matured feature set presented in the [1.1 specification](http://yaml.org/spec/1.1/current.html), and avoid the newer stuff found in the [1.2 specification](http://www.yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html). However, programming is an ever-evolving monster, so by the time you finish reading this article, you’re likely to be able to use the 1.2 spec.

## Final Philosophy

The final word here is that each serialization language should be treated with a case-by-case reverence. Some are the bee’s knees when it comes to machine readability, some are the cat’s meow for human readability, and some are simply gilded turds. Here’s the ultimate breakdown: If you are writing code for other code to read, use YAML. If you are writing code that writes code for other code to read, use JSON. Finally, if you are writing code that transcompiles code into code that other code will read, rethink your life choices.