Post #3778714

2026-07-13 05:12 UTC

It’s still baffling to me that Helm got as popular as it has… like, using text templating tools to generate a structured, whitespace-sensitive format?! Why did we do this to ourselves?! Sysadmin-me of 2002-2012 would be absolutely livid. We templated weird formats that had little formal structure and zero tooling… past-me absolutely craved a structured syntax that had support across every language!! So most languages have yaml or at least json (which is valid yaml) support… it’s universal. And instead, now we use go’s text/template to concatenate strings into what we hope is correct yaml. Aaaahhhhhhhhh (Any helm folks out there, I ❤️ u)

Replies (4)

@jstangroome@infosec.exchange 2026-07-13 05:40

@whack@hachyderm.io so much this. I am also regularly frustrated by knowing which kubernetes object and property I want to influence and then having the reverse engineer the helm chart to find which helm variable (if any) will allow me to set that. At least kustomize didn't need me to fork a chart to change a property that wasn't anticipated.

Open ##3778711
@whack@hachyderm.io 2026-07-13 05:19

Real talk. Googlers, tell me: Was Helm a trauma response to Borgcfg? Because… I would understand that.

Open ##3778908
@mosen@hachyderm.io 2026-07-13 05:17

@whack@hachyderm.io yep. Absolutely insane. Taking a structured format and then reindenting some other structured variable and then shooting yourself because you can’t see the result, or there are so many forms of multi line values you can’t remember is so insane I wanna scream.

Open ##4232694
@purpleidea@mastodon.social 2026-07-13 05:17

@whack@hachyderm.io When someone introduced me the Helm, I was like, what? Why? So much of our tech is not being driven by thoughtful design.

Open ##4232696