@beppu: hey thanks for the reminder. I had no idea! I suppose I never even thought about it even though I use it so often.

No problem. Any help is appreciated.

Am I completely barking up the wrong tree?

My teammate @adamfrey wrote this up about a good Clojure-y alternative to JSON. http://blog.altometrics.com/2015/09/stop-using-json-for-config/

Basically, use EDN and compile it to JSON with a script that's been compiled into a fast command-line node script. Nifty stuff!