Yes, I'd muuuch rather type `FONT_SIZE=7 FONT_FAMILY='DejaVuSans' FONT_WEIGHT=normal BG=black FG=pink FG_HL=blue BG_VISUAL=green THING='noremapsomething<vimscript>' vim` than polluting my home with a single ~/.config directory in which to put all my config files. And if that gets too long to type every time I start vim I can just make an alias and put it in a file and ..oh

RegEdit.exe welcomes you with open arms. It even supports multiple endian mixed encoding strings. Clearly it was designed for galactic scale.

And when I change a setting in a program, where does it set that environment variable?

But why? I think a config file is way easier to understand.