I have this optimistic belief that there exists this platonic ideal of a configuration language which isn't a programming language but is still expressible enou

I have this optimistic belief that there exists this platonic ideal of a configuration language which isn't a programming language but is still expressible enough. I think of it as an algebra of configurations and there are at least two existing languages that implement this ideal. One of them is Jsonnet and the other is internal to Google (and might have influenced Jsonnet). That said, obviously a good language is not enough. You still need good judgement about which stuff goes into configuration.