Why YAML?  Why not? I started a simple project a while back; all I needed to do was store some information about stuff around the office, and since it's a small office, I thought that a RDBMS system was overkill.  So I decided to go with XML.  After creating a document, I then decided to fight with XML DTDs, and tried to fight with both XML DOM and XML SAX for Python, I finally decided on an approach that built dictionaries using SAX, as described here.    After messing with it for a while, I decided there had to be a better way.  Almost by accident, I stumbled upon YAML.