I'm reminded of the discussion we had a few days ago about environment variables; one problem there is that env variables are always strings, and sometimes you do want different types in your config. But clearly having the system automatically interpret whether it's a string or something else is a major source of bugs. Maybe having an explicit definition of which field should be which type would help, but then you end up with the heavy-handed XML with its XSD schema.
Or you just use JSON, which is light-weight, easy to read, but unambiguous about its types. I guess there's a good reason it's so popular.
Maybe other systems like yaml and environment variables should only ever be used for strings, and not for anything else, and I suppose replacing regular yaml with 'strictyaml' could play a role there. Or cause unending confusion, because it does violate the spec.