You just described the cycle, not a path to exit it. There is no such thing as "genuinely configuration now and always", nor "genuinely not configuration". Sys

You just described the cycle, not a path to exit it. There is no such thing as "genuinely configuration now and always", nor "genuinely not configuration". Systems change, and requirements of those systems change. Oh now someone wants to do more things with what used to be 'just configuration': scale it up and to work across many instances by scripting configuration templates with parameters. Look, all of this scripted automation is doing the same things that can be neatly divided into buckets, can we simplify it and turn it into a few configuration options? And so the cycle repeats. The churn is not reducible to labeling it as pointless make-work, its born of changing and growing systems.