Why is server configuration so annoying?

A lot of programmers these days are switching over to dynamic languages like Python and Ruby, mostly for their ease of development.

Sure, it entails that one must make sure that you aren't passing the wrong types to wrong functions, or you won't find out until runtime, but, if you're willing to take that risk, dynamic typing can be amazing to speed up your work process.

And, just like languages, nearly every other aspect of computer science/engineering has evolved for the simpler, more elegant approach, and, in this shift, many have profited.

For example, Twilio's business model is based entirely on the fact that building phone systems in a modern programming language is just much too difficult for an average programmer, and, by simplifying the process by which developers can take advantage of phones, they've made quite a company. 

And, people work everyday  to simplify things that were previously immensely complicated, into black boxes in which the details are abstracted away.

As another example, take the humble Python list. It seems like a pretty simple idea; you can push and pop things, and you can delete things from the middle, you can sort and search them.

But, implementing a data structure like that in C is a formidable task, especially with all the optimization work that the Python folk have put into it. 

And, things like this have lead to an explosion in Python's popularity.

But, I see one area where this type of stuff is immensely lacking, and that's server configuration. 

First of all, why on Earth does Apache still use XML?! Is there literally no other format they can use?

Then, SSL shouldn't be so difficult to set up. It should take, at most, one shell script, or ANYTHING like that that'll generate a basic SSL virtualhost. 

There need to be sensible defaults for log-files per vhost and so on.

There need to be macros that we can use to have chunks of configuration with variables plugged in.

And, in general, a lot of things need to be abstracted away into more usable and easy components.


That's all I've got to say, but, do tell me what you think in the comment section below.

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