

My experiences are similar to yours, though less k8’s focused and more general DevSecOps.
it becomes a battle between custom-fitting and generalisation.
This is mentioned in the link as “Barely General Enough” I’m not sure i fully subscribe to that specific interpretation but the trade off between generalisation and specialisation is certainly a point of contention in all but the smallest dev houses (assuming they are not just cranking hard coded one-off solutions).
I dislike the yaml syntax, in the same way i dislike python, but it is pervasive in the industry at the moment so you work with that you have.
I don’t think yaml is the issue as much as the uncontrolled nature of the usage.
You’d have the same issue with any format as flexible to interpretation that was being created/edited by hand.
As in, if the yaml were generated and used automatically as part of a chain i don’t think it’d be an issue, but it is not nearly prescriptive enough to produce the high level kind of model definitions further up the requirements stack.
note: i’m not saying it couldn’t be done in yaml, i’m saying that it would be a massive effort to shoehorn what was needed into a structure that wasn’t designed for that kind of thing
Which then brings use back to the generalisation vs specialisation argument, do you create a hyper-specific dsl that allows you only to define things that will work within the boundaries of what you want, does that mean it can only work in those boundaries or do you introduce more general definitions and the complexity that comes with that.
Whether or not the solution is another layer of abstraction into a different format or something else entirely i’m not sure, but i am sure that raw yaml isn’t it.
Apologies, i cannot divulge that information as per the NDA i signed at the time.
/s