This blog post is so wrong and out-of-touch that it boggles the mind how it popped up in HN. The blogger's strawman to criticize the use of env variables is so mindless and outlandish that casts some doubt regarding the author's experience and know-how.
Meanwhile I'll just say the following:
* Any config input, whether passed through env variables or config files or command line arguments or external services or telepathy, is handled by clients. Sure, anyone is free to directly call getenv() from whatever corner of the project, but to handle any input properly you need to use dedicated clients to handle common usecases such as input validation, logging, provide sane defaults, and layer config settings.
Meanwhile I'll just say the following:
* Any config input, whether passed through env variables or config files or command line arguments or external services or telepathy, is handled by clients. Sure, anyone is free to directly call getenv() from whatever corner of the project, but to handle any input properly you need to use dedicated clients to handle common usecases such as input validation, logging, provide sane defaults, and layer config settings.