> And if you still think it's bad anyways, you can always improve on it. But very few actually want to put on the enormous amount of work needed to improve YAML or create a new language.

The issue is less about putting in the work to create a new language, it's about convincing a significant chunk of an ecosystem to use that new langauge.

> IMO if there was something that was substantially better, we would see projects switching to it in a heartbeat.

Switching costs are non-zero and can block a switch.

ie: Helm charts are built on YAML and gotmpl, even though JSON is also an option. I can make a fairly compelling argument that Helm would be better with JSON and JSonnet, but that ignores a huge amount of investment in existing Helm charts. Whatever benefits are there would be swamped by the cost in terms of additional complexity and potential porting costs.