On: How to build a news app that never goes down and c...

[0x0]

Why not? With config as data, you need an extra parsing step. More moving parts, more maintenance, and the same end result.

[andrewmunsell → 0x0]

To be fair, that parsing step is still here-- it's just being parsed into Javascript.

[pyre → andrewmunsell]

If the configuration was data, then you would have to parsing steps:

  Data => Python
  Data => JavaScript

With this setup they only have one:

  Python => JavaScript

Granted, storing it in YAML/JSON/whatever means that you could potentially have many different codebases / languages reading it without a Language A => Language B conversion. It just depends on what works best for your project / team.