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> difficult to pull off and requires productization, in other words not low-level tooling in a text file. Is this supposed to be a feature? One of the great t

> difficult to pull off and requires productization, in other words not low-level tooling in a text file. Is this supposed to be a feature? One of the great things about simple config files is that you can use standard GNU tools to view edit, and diff them, you can put them in source control, you can be sure that you can edit them on a remote server no matter what's installed, etc. Eliminating all those benefits would require an extraordinary jump in functionality as a tradeoff, a jump in functionality that most things frankly don't need.

Edmond 8y ago
You're right regarding the value of text files. ConfigNode is really for management of configurations for use cases where you can have huge JSON/YAML files and you want to be able to manage them, facilitate dynamism (often using templates)...support collaboration..etc...it is a gold-plated solution and not necessarily suitable for simpler needs. Here's another example of ConfigNode used to manage Akamai configurations: https://youtu.be/gcPAmpKo9fs https://youtu.be/gcPAmpKo9fs Akamai configurations can be very complex and need to be maintained and managed, you can't really do that effectively using text files.
Felz 8y ago
I worry that text files promote local minimums. Like, the standard GNU tools or whatever editor you use is "good enough" for what you expect to do with them, but there exist better tools for your specific task that you never even look for. With a binary file, you of course have to be using something specific to work with them. And if lots of people were doing that, that would in turn drive a lot of specific, good options to choose from. The tools would be better at their specific task. They could provide actual _user interfaces._ But there's not enough standardization in user interfaces for to reduce the cost of relearning each tool, and the tools would need both an interface and an API to automate them (we don't tend to get both for free), and we don't have anything great for chaining together APIs. So text files it is, which kind of provide these things, but they don't extend too well. The trend in computing tools is to slowly invent what you could get easily with more specific formats... using text files. Automatic formatters, so you can pretend your project files are really the AST you care about. Smart IDEs with autocompletion, because you're not really typing arbitrary characters. IDEs that will collapse a lot of unnecessary information for you, like showing only the first snippet of JSDoc. Type systems that show you what's available and what you can plug together in a sane way. Version control that pretends it knows how to solve the problem of diffing/merging.

Edmond 8y ago

You're right regarding the value of text files. ConfigNode is really for management of configurations for use cases where you can have huge JSON/YAML files and you want to be able to manage them, facilitate dynamism (often using templates)...support collaboration..etc...it is a gold-plated solution and not necessarily suitable for simpler needs. Here's another example of ConfigNode used to manage Akamai configurations: https://youtu.be/gcPAmpKo9fs https://youtu.be/gcPAmpKo9fs Akamai configurations can be very complex and need to be maintained and managed, you can't really do that effectively using text files.

Felz 8y ago

I worry that text files promote local minimums. Like, the standard GNU tools or whatever editor you use is "good enough" for what you expect to do with them, but there exist better tools for your specific task that you never even look for. With a binary file, you of course have to be using something specific to work with them. And if lots of people were doing that, that would in turn drive a lot of specific, good options to choose from. The tools would be better at their specific task. They could provide actual _user interfaces._ But there's not enough standardization in user interfaces for to reduce the cost of relearning each tool, and the tools would need both an interface and an API to automate them (we don't tend to get both for free), and we don't have anything great for chaining together APIs. So text files it is, which kind of provide these things, but they don't extend too well. The trend in computing tools is to slowly invent what you could get easily with more specific formats... using text files. Automatic formatters, so you can pretend your project files are really the AST you care about. Smart IDEs with autocompletion, because you're not really typing arbitrary characters. IDEs that will collapse a lot of unnecessary information for you, like showing only the first snippet of JSDoc. Type systems that show you what's available and what you can plug together in a sane way. Version control that pretends it knows how to solve the problem of diffing/merging.