Yup exactly my experience as well, again a stupid idea to try and make a "configuration" language out of nested key value pairs that end up needing fancy interpreters allowing more and more semantic into the keys and values to start doing what a simple program could have done in half the time...
I ve worked in 4 companies over a period of 10 years, each had exactly this problem, with yml, json, xml, properties file (you dont want to see business logic conditionals in a properties text file, where the keys shapes command an interpreter to behave dynamically...)
The only times I saw a team do it well was a php backend of all things where the lead said they d program all their variations in php rather than source it from configuration flat descriptors and it was amazing, clear, simple and powerful. They had to release the backend at each config change instead of releasing the config change only, but Im still unsure why exactly that's a problem: the configs are software too if we re honest with ourselves, shoe-horning them in a descriptor language isnt gonna make them flat.
I ve worked in 4 companies over a period of 10 years, each had exactly this problem, with yml, json, xml, properties file (you dont want to see business logic conditionals in a properties text file, where the keys shapes command an interpreter to behave dynamically...)
The only times I saw a team do it well was a php backend of all things where the lead said they d program all their variations in php rather than source it from configuration flat descriptors and it was amazing, clear, simple and powerful. They had to release the backend at each config change instead of releasing the config change only, but Im still unsure why exactly that's a problem: the configs are software too if we re honest with ourselves, shoe-horning them in a descriptor language isnt gonna make them flat.