# Dhall

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Dhall and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a configuration language that sits between plain JSON and a full programming language, with refactors that keep identical hashes.

## Why people recommend it

- Middle ground between JSON and programming (3 comments): "It seems to sit at a sweet spot between "just JSON, no programming convenience at all" and "full-blown programming language with nontrivial toolchain"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46162771)) "CUE, Dhall, and Jsonnet are doing more or less the right thing, but they are a tad large." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45958461)) "looking like full-blown programming languages is a feature" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45957469))
- Behavior-preserving refactors keep identical hashes (2 comments): "In Dhall, most behavior preserving refactors produce the exact same hash code so you can know" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49480237)) "has this kind of guarantee as one of its nicest features" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49478273))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [CUE](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cue.md): 29 recommend
- [TOML](https://hackerapproved.com/p/toml.md): 19 recommend
- [Jsonnet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jsonnet.md): 12 recommend
- [HCL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hcl.md): 10 recommend
- [Nickel configuration language](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nickel.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Dhall", https://hackerapproved.com/p/dhall/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).