[mieubrisse]

Yep, application code can have the same problem! The difference is that application code lives "inside the abstraction" of the program, and is viewed and edited by a much smaller set of developers.

Configuration, by contrast, sits at the seam between two systems. It's the top-level parameterization of the abstraction, and behaves more like an API. E.g. imagine if the only way to configure Kubernetes or Docker were in language-specitic bindings - there was no such thing as a YAML lingua franca.