I think the fundamental mistake of nginx's configuration syntax was always making it look much more flexible and general than it actually is. Particularly with

I think the fundamental mistake of nginx's configuration syntax was always making it look much more flexible and general than it actually is. Particularly with statements like `if` almost giving it the flavour of a general purpose programming language. If you actually do try and make use of the apparent flexibility of the syntax, you very quickly start to run into situations where you inexplicably just "can't do that", with the failure mode frequently just being nginx quietly not doing the right thing.