In TypeScript, I use the same validation library (Zod) anywhere I need to validate data. So, I validate my config / environment variables on startup using a Zod schema, I validate my RPC endpoint arguments the same way, etc.

I presume you could do the same thing with Django— use Django’s validation feature to validate everything including your config. It’s a nice pattern that gives uniformity and predictability to all of your validation logic.

Not really, unfortunately. The thing is, if you mistype a configuration key, Django won’t pick it up. It’ll just leave the default value in place. I also don’t think it does any validation on settings values, it’ll just pass them to whatever uses them. That’s the last time I used it anyway.

The situation is worse than that because any plugins usually define their own settings which also don’t validate their contents.

I think something centralised that lets you properly scope and validate settings would be nice. If you mistype a key, you’d want an error that it’s just not valid.