Interesting. I’m pondering non-turing-complete languages myself. I believe they are under-estimated and should be used more often for anything that looks like configuration.
Configurations usually start simple, like we only need “x = y” statements. Oh wait, sections would be nice, so use the ini-format. Oh wait, nesting stuff would be nice, so use JSON/XML/Lisp. Oh wait, we want to reduce duplicated stuff, so use a preprocessor. Oh wait, more abstractions would be nice, so use some scripting language already. Stop, we just skipped one level before scripting languages, the non-turing-complete languages!
Concerning Dhall, I never met the “Oh wait, we want to annotate types” idea. Is that really desireable for configurations?
Configurations usually start simple, like we only need “x = y” statements. Oh wait, sections would be nice, so use the ini-format. Oh wait, nesting stuff would be nice, so use JSON/XML/Lisp. Oh wait, we want to reduce duplicated stuff, so use a preprocessor. Oh wait, more abstractions would be nice, so use some scripting language already. Stop, we just skipped one level before scripting languages, the non-turing-complete languages!
Concerning Dhall, I never met the “Oh wait, we want to annotate types” idea. Is that really desireable for configurations?