Every "new" webserver tries to fix apache configuration syntax mess, and imho they all fail. Yes, setting up a reverse proxy looks simpler with nginx or haproxy for that matter. Now when it comes to complex configurations they all suck, and I'm not sure a json/yaml config format is going to fix that as long as webservers have such wide scopes (from serving static pages, to proxying traffic, authorizing, authenticating, encrypting...). At least apache is very modular on this regard and some credit should be given to it having survived and evolved along with all the newer options.