The topic of this discussion is YAML (and JSON as an alternative), and of this thread is "using text template engines to generate YAML", which covers a lot more than just config files. YAML and JSON and template engines are used for a hell of a lot more than just writing config files, but they're also very useful for that common task too. The issues that apply to config files also apply to many other uses of YAML and JSON. Dynamically generated YAML and JSON are very common and useful, and have many applications besides config files.
The fact that you've never done and can't imagine anything complicated enough to need more than a simple hand-written data-only config file doesn't mean other people don't do that all the time. It's simply a failure of your imagination.
What I can't understand is what you were getting at about "punching down". When you say things like "I would be strongly tempted to murder an engineer", that sounds like punching down to me. And why you were complaining nobody gave any examples, by saying "no specific GOOD examples of configuration-as-code have been brought up". Don't my examples count, or do you consider them bad?
So what was bad about my examples (or did you not read them or follow any of the link that you asked for)? Pantomime had many procedurally generated config files, using the JSON templating engine I described, one for every plug-in object (and everything was a plug-in so there were a lot of them), as well as some for the Unity project and the build deployment configuration itself. It also used dynamically generated JSON for many other purposes, but that doesn't cancel out its extensive use of JSON for config files.
The fact that you've never done and can't imagine anything complicated enough to need more than a simple hand-written data-only config file doesn't mean other people don't do that all the time. It's simply a failure of your imagination.
What I can't understand is what you were getting at about "punching down". When you say things like "I would be strongly tempted to murder an engineer", that sounds like punching down to me. And why you were complaining nobody gave any examples, by saying "no specific GOOD examples of configuration-as-code have been brought up". Don't my examples count, or do you consider them bad?
So what was bad about my examples (or did you not read them or follow any of the link that you asked for)? Pantomime had many procedurally generated config files, using the JSON templating engine I described, one for every plug-in object (and everything was a plug-in so there were a lot of them), as well as some for the Unity project and the build deployment configuration itself. It also used dynamically generated JSON for many other purposes, but that doesn't cancel out its extensive use of JSON for config files.