Configuration Hell
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
A state where systems have become painful to manage because of too many environment variables, flags, files, overrides, and hidden dependencies. In engineering culture the phrase is common wherever configuration complexity outgrows understanding.
In plain English: A miserable situation caused by overly complex and tangled configuration.
Example: "The migration exposed configuration hell when nobody could explain which of the six sources of truth actually determined the payment timeout in production."