Those are the things that would actually get easier: your configuration would be a data structure in the host language rather than a text file. So you wouldn't have to parse it at all. Other programs would have to either be in the same language or have some way of communicating with the host language, but that isn't too bad a restriction.
Similarly, this would make modifying configuration programmatically better. Instead of dealing with serializing and deserializing to random text formats, you would just provide a Config -> Config function. This would also make tools modifying configuration parameters more composable because they wouldn't be overwriting each other's changes unnecessarily.
Similarly, this would make modifying configuration programmatically better. Instead of dealing with serializing and deserializing to random text formats, you would just provide a Config -> Config function. This would also make tools modifying configuration parameters more composable because they wouldn't be overwriting each other's changes unnecessarily.