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Came here to say similar. In particular dhall does allow scripting (functions etc.) but is non-Turing-complete as a feature. This seems like a particular sweet spot to me as it allows for more dynamism than data formats like json/yaml while constraining the scope sensibly.

It also has very nice bindings with haskell and nix

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also this is probably a nicer intro https://dhall-lang.org/

What is up with the strange comma positioning? I assume that’s just a stylistic choice?

It allows each line to be completely independent of it’s neighbors; you can comment and/or add lines without needing to touch neighboring lines. Also, it makes it visually easy to spot missing commas. Give it a try sometime, it’s actually quite nice.

Also makes nice file diffs!

Wouldn't the same thing occur if it wasn't there at all?

But they are not independent: first line doesn’t have one.

Wouldn't this also be solved by allowing trailing commas?

Having prefixed commas is a rather common style in the Haskell community, because it ends up nicely matching open/closing brackets/braces and lining things up.

Since the author of Dhall comes from the Haskell community, he's kept this style.

Author here: This is correct. I'm just borrowing a Haskell convention. Also, I like this convention because it leads to vertical alignment of commas.

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