I’ve never met a developer who enjoys “configuring” anything. Is there something fundamentally wrong with the whole idea of “configuration”? Is it a “code smell”?

Most configuration I’ve ever worked with violates basic principles of clean code and good software design – non-existent or shallow modularisation, mixture of concerns, poor naming, deep nesting, duplication, over-specification, etc. etc. No wonder it’s painful to work with!

Whenever we think we need configuration, should we instead pause and think about redesigning so that we don’t need configuration?