Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Dhall Configuration Language VS JSON

Compare Dhall Configuration Language VS JSON and see what are their differences

Dhall Configuration Language logo Dhall Configuration Language

A non-repetitive alternative to YAML

JSON logo JSON

(JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format
  • Dhall Configuration Language Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-27
  • JSON Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-28

Dhall Configuration Language features and specs

  • Deterministic
    Dhall is designed to be a deterministic configuration language, meaning that given the same input, it will always produce the same output. This ensures consistency and repeatability across environments.
  • Type-Safe
    Dhall includes a strong static type system, preventing many common errors associated with misconfigurations. Types are checked at compile time, ensuring configuration values meet specific criteria before deployment.
  • Total Programming Language
    Unlike many other configuration languages, Dhall is a total functional programming language, which means every program written in Dhall will terminate. This prevents infinite loops and other runtime issues.
  • Interoperability
    Dhall can generate JSON, YAML, and other data interchange formats, making it highly interoperable with existing systems that require these formats for configuration.
  • Modular
    Dhall allows for modular configuration files. You can define reusable components and import them across different configurations, promoting DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles.

Possible disadvantages of Dhall Configuration Language

  • Learning Curve
    While Dhall is designed to be simple, the presence of a type system and functional programming concepts can present a learning curve to new users, especially those without a programming background.
  • Tooling Support
    Compared to more established languages, Dhall has less tooling support. Users might find fewer IDE extensions, plugins, or community libraries to assist in development.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    Being relatively new, Dhall has a smaller ecosystem that may lack the breadth of community contributions, such as templates and integration examples, found in more mature configuration languages.
  • Performance Overhead
    The type checking and interpretation of Dhall can introduce some performance overhead compared to more traditional configuration formats like JSON or YAML, which are simpler to parse.
  • Complexity for Simple Configurations
    For simple configurations, the added complexity of Dhall's type system and functional features may be unnecessary, leading to overhead without a clear benefit.

JSON features and specs

  • Simplicity
    JSON is easy to read and write due to its straightforward syntax, making it a convenient data format for both humans and machines.
  • Language Independence
    JSON is supported by many programming languages, making it a versatile choice for data interchange across different environments.
  • Lightweight
    JSON's compact format allows for efficient data transfer, which is particularly beneficial in web applications where bandwidth is a concern.
  • Integration
    JSON easily integrates with modern web technologies and APIs, making it a preferred choice for RESTful services and web applications.
  • Data Structure
    JSON supports complex data structures, including objects and arrays, providing flexibility in representing various data forms.

Possible disadvantages of JSON

  • Limited Data Types
    JSON supports a limited set of data types, which may require additional handling when working with more complex data structures found in other formats.
  • No Comments
    JSON lacks a native mechanism for including comments within the data, which can be a limitation for documentation and readability purposes.
  • Security Concerns
    Parsing JSON can introduce security vulnerabilities if not properly handled, such as malicious data execution through insecure deserialization.
  • Verbosity
    Although lightweight, JSON can become verbose for highly nested structures, which can impact readability and processing performance.
  • Error Handling
    JSON's lack of detailed error handling mechanisms can make debugging more difficult when dealing with malformed data or parsing errors.

Dhall Configuration Language videos

No Dhall Configuration Language videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

JSON videos

Parsing JSON Review - Part 1

More videos:

  • Review - Parsing JSON Review - Part 2
  • Review - JSon Foreign Vol.1 Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Dhall Configuration Language and JSON)
Configuration Management
75 75%
25% 25
Developer Tools
53 53%
47% 47
Software Development
63 63%
37% 37
Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Dhall Configuration Language and JSON. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Dhall Configuration Language should be more popular than JSON. It has been mentiond 91 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Dhall Configuration Language mentions (91)

  • Any program can be a GitHub Actions shell
    I'll give a shot at some guiding principals: 1. Do not use yaml. All github action logic should be written in a language that compiles to yaml, for example dhall (https://dhall-lang.org/). Yaml is an awful language for programmers, and it's a worse language for non-programmers. It's good for no one. 2. To the greatest extent possible, do not use any actions which install things. For example, don't use... - Source: Hacker News / 26 days ago
  • StrictYAML
    I'm a fan of anything that moves us away from stringly typed nonsense. See also Dhall (which can render to yaml). I like the idea but found the veneer broke a little too often and left me squinting at Haskell. https://dhall-lang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Some Programming Language Ideas
    I think you're asking for Starlark (https://starlark-lang.org), a language that strongly resembles Python but isn't Turing-complete, originally designed at Google for use in their build system. There's also Dhall (https://dhall-lang.org), which targets configuration use cases; I'm less familiar with it. One problem is that, while non-Turing-completeness can be helpful for maintainability, it's not really... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • 8 months of OCaml after 8 years of Haskell in production
    > Lambda calculus is as pure as can be, and also has terms that don't normalize. That is not considered a side effect. Many typed lambda calculi do normalise. You can also have a look https://dhall-lang.org/ for some pragmatic that normalises. > A better example of impurity in Haskell for pragmatic's sake is the trace function, that can be used to print debugging information from pure functions. Well, but that's... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Thoughts on ThoughtWorks Radar 2024
    I was first turned onto Pkl during my Dhall Trough of Disillusionment phase (Dhall is cool, but man is it hard) by James Ward. It looked to be a language that had enough types to compile YAML/JSON configuration files wayyyy more safely. I’ve had enough YAML/JSON misconfigurations break production, that I started looking into ways to compile those problems away, and Dhall helped a lot, but the learning curve and... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
View more

JSON mentions (13)

  • The Last Breaking Change | JSON Schema Blog
    The YAML 0.1 spec was sent to a public user group in May 2001. JSON was named in a State Software internal discussion. State Software was founded in March 2001. json.org was launched in 2002. Therefore you’re just wrong: YAML came out before JSON. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Why does wine give warnings about using 64bit prefixes, or has 32bit packages? Hasn't the world moved on from 32 bit a century ago?
    How come that doesn't apply to other libraries? For example, when I write Java or Node.js programs, I don't need to make sure packages like json.org or express.js have a 32bit or 64bit environment. What makes windows libs different than NPM libs? Source: over 2 years ago
  • “Ignore the f'ing haters ” And other lessons learned from creating a popular
    The first two sentences of the text on http://json.org are "JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write." It's a primary goal of JSON, it's fair to question whether it's successful at it. Personally, I'd much rather write TOML or S expressions. I don't like YAML at all, the whitespace sensitivity drives me nuts. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Recording your JSON data to MCAP, a file format that support multiple serialization formats
    To help you make the transition, we’ve written a tutorial on how to write an MCAP writer in Python to record JSON data to an MCAP file. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • replace \" with "
    What you need to probably do is to step back and learn the format for JSON, and the core data structures that you will find in most languages:. Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Dhall Configuration Language and JSON, you can also consider the following products

YAML - YAML 1.2 --- YAML: YAML Ain't Markup Language

LibreOffice - Base - Base, database, database frontend, LibreOffice, ODF, Open Standards, SQL, ODBC

Jsonnet - A powerful DSL for elegant description of JSON data.

Microsoft Office Access - Access is now much more than a way to create desktop databases. It’s an easy-to-use tool for quickly creating browser-based database applications.

TOML - TOML - Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language

Brilliant Database - Create a personal or business desktop database fast and easily using this simple all-in-one database software. Free 30 day trial.