[crawrey]

I want to know why we are still using environment variables (and paths to a lesser extent), other than the fact that they are heavily ingrained.

Are there OSs out there that address this solution in a less archaic way?

[a_bonobo]

TempleOS has something like a set of environment variables for each task - if the user asks for a variable and it isn't found, then the parental task's variables are checked, followed by the next parental task's variables etc., all the way up to Adam, which would be like global environment variables.

http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/Mysteries.html