Comment by bazoom42

According to wikipedia “There are many variants of the S-expression format, supporting a variety of different syntaxes for different datatypes.”

Using parentheses instead of curly braces is fine by me, but it doesnt seem to solve the issue of syntax bikeshedding.

The fundamental problem is “configuration” is a huge area, from simple key-value lists to complex declarative languages. And you want the format to be both easy to read and edit for humans and simple to parse and process for computers. No single format will be perfect for all use cases, but perhaps a compromise can be found which is good enough for most cases.