The Kubernetes ecosystem has made me hate YAML so much. Maybe I am just not using the tooling correctly but anchors all over the place, templating, etc.
I have yet to see a solution to that type of thing though as every config language exists on a spectrum of syntax to full blown programing language.
YAML isn't really the problem with Kubernetes though. The Kubernetes problem is that the config is complex and heavily typed, but also essentially ad hoc - outside some basic constructs there's conventions but they're all different or evolved and not uniform.
It does get a lot easier to deal with when you have VS Code tied into CRD definitions for example, butcimmnot convinced config is the problem so much as just Kubernetes is all things to all people and as a result what any given configuration actually does is almost completely random and likely to hit a bunch of edge cases.