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Comment by Lammy

12 hours ago

> Minimal Abstract Markup Language

Pardon my naming nitpick and lack of commentary on any technical aspect, but I don't think this is a markup language. What is being marked up? HTML is called that because it's marking up text with like bold and italics and font and color and paragraphs and stuff.

To be fair, YAML's creators had the same misunderstanding. Compare:

https://yaml.org/spec/history/2001-12-10.html

https://yaml.org/spec/history/2002-04-07.html

15 comments

Lammy

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qrios  12 hours ago

Also not abstract. To be ‘abstract’, a language must combine several objects ‘under one umbrella’. Depicting different things in the same notation is the opposite of abstract. YACCANL (Yet Another Cargo-Cult Abstraction Non-Markup Language).

  • ctenb  10 hours ago

    Abstract is an abstract word. Your interpretation is just one of the possible meanings. You could argue that this language is abstract because the data has no intrinsic meaning.

    • miningape  6 hours ago

      Yeah but then the argument dissolves into the sea of absurdity. We can (and should) assume at some level there's another intelligent being on the other end that we're communicating to.

      2 replies →

HeavyStorm  6 hours ago

Wow, wasn't aware (or simply never noticed) the name change. I was still calling it yet another...

odie5533  12 hours ago

Is XML a markup language? Because it was often used for not that too.

  • Skeime  7 hours ago

    But XML was designed as a markup language. That is was often used for configuration is not its fault. (And it works much better for its original purpose, where the otherwise strange distinction between attributes and child nodes actually makes sense.)

    MAML seems to be designed as a configuration language, but calls itself a markup language. (YAML did too, but they changed it at some point.)