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Meanwhile, I peek at my emacs config and continue to wonder why people don't just embrace a programming language.

Yes, there are bad consequences that can happen. No, you don't dodge having problems by picking a different data format. You just pick different problems. And take away tools from the users to deal with them.

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Just something like an INI file might be fine for most use-cases as well and is easier to reason about.

Elisp for Emacs, Lua for those on Neovim...

Definitely more control than guessing the right JSON, or breaking that YAML file. Plus, you get completion, introspection, and help while editing the config because you're in a code-writing environment. Bonus for having search and text manipulation tools under your fingertips instead of clicking checkboxes or tabbing through forms.

Reading this does make me think about how exploring settings in emacs `M-x config` settings is actually better than I would expect. So it isn't like you can't also have the checkboxes and forms.

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