> I have to ask…why do people want a Turing complete language to configure stuff?
What's the alternative? Petition the maintainer to add every little feature any random user might want? Or just do it yourself in a few lines of code?
Case in point, when I was still using BSPWM I did no like how if there was only one window on the desktop it would still get an outline. So I wrote 14 lines of Awk (BSPWM lets you use any language) to get what I want. This was only possible because BSPWM gives me all the primitive building blocks and lets me go wild with them. Sure, if all you want to do is set a few colors and numbers that's overkill, but any power user will sooner or later find himself thinking "oh, if only I could do X when Y unless Z".
I think having good plugin support is a better way to do it. Keep the most obvious configuration options behind a "dumb" config language like JSON or something, but create a framework to add functionality via a plugin API.
there is a point where maintaining zillions^H^Hmany plugins and keep them updated between version gets nightmarish (see gnome extensions for example)