[ivlad]

You are proposing to use general propose language vs domain-specific ones. I think, this discussion has been settled quite some time ago. For example, awk itself is domain-specific, built for processing text (or filed-separated) files. On the other had, m4 is as old as awk. m4 was heavily used even before autoconf (sendmail configuration is probably the best-known and possibly the ugliest application of it), for configuration, so one can argue, the need for macro expansion and rendering of configuration (as well as othe types) files was recognised even back then.

m4 just shows its age, and we’ve learned what is good (being Turing-complete) and what’s less useful (multiple output streams).

m4 could’ve evolved into m5, m6, etc., but nobody did it, instead people developed tools like jinja. One could argue, this is wrong and should’ve been evolutionary, but the point still is, domain-specific language to render configuration existed because there was use for them. Perl indeed could be such, I guess it did not happen for totally unrelated reasons. If Perl worked, Python would not gain popularity.

Pkl is not conceptually a new invention, it’s a new attempt to solve a real problem.