People get really upset when they have to type "array(" instead of "[" or "{" (pre-PHP 5.something) and quotes instead of no quotes (and punting the character escape problem to something else) I guess.
Using code-as-data works really well in Lisp-like languages. Reading a Clojure project's project.clj file or a Lisp project's project.asdf file is pretty pleasant. A programming language's choice in how it decides to handle library config info for building and specifying dependencies (XML, makefiles, JSON, YAML, INI, nothing, etc...) will be a good indicator for the culture of the language around config files in general. Composer for PHP only came out in 2012.
Using code-as-data works really well in Lisp-like languages. Reading a Clojure project's project.clj file or a Lisp project's project.asdf file is pretty pleasant. A programming language's choice in how it decides to handle library config info for building and specifying dependencies (XML, makefiles, JSON, YAML, INI, nothing, etc...) will be a good indicator for the culture of the language around config files in general. Composer for PHP only came out in 2012.