I mean, fair enough I guess. I've accidentally more-or-less reinvented interpreters on two separate occasions (both times using JSON as a quasi-AST), so I understand it.

I guess I just feel like if you feel like you need programming constructs in your configuration, its approaching it from the wrong angle, and it should instead be handled via plugins.

I feel like configuration itself should be a "dumb" format like JSON, and when you want to do anything that can't be accomplished by plain JSON, you should allow for easy development of plugins.