From: why the lucky stiff <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2004-05-05T02:35:08+09:00
Subject: Re: YAML vs. Marshal

Hal Fulton wrote:

> Can you explain this to me? I sense some irony here. You're taking a
> format which is renowned for making persistent objects readable in
> plain text, and you're making it unreadable.

Well, the bytecode is sort of a sideproject and it's one of those things 
that probably doesn't make sense but actually fills a need.  I can't 
think of anything else really that is "one of those things," so I'm 
proud to present a first-of-breed nonsensical necessity.

Why not provide a wire format that is more efficient than YAML and keep 
its portability?  My big use case is this:  I love DRb.  I want it to 
work across languages.  I guess you could do this with plain YAML.  But 
we don't really need YAML's readability.  And we could use the 
efficiency a bit.

It took me an afternoon to write the bytecode parser, so I don't think 
it's been expensive.  But I want to rewrite it again, having some new 
insights, which will take another afternoon.  So, I just need to decide 
if it's worth an afternoon.  Keep in mind that summer afternoons are 
prettier than any other kind of afternoon.  Perhaps I will wait till 
October.

> No flame intended. I like YAML, I use it all the time, and I appreciate
> all your hard work.

Didn't you just say "No flame intended" in another thread?  Seriously.  
It's starting to sound really insincere, Hal.

_why