I agree with you completely. Nginx's config syntax is better than Apache's but it still feels like mystery meat. Can you use this directive or option within this block? Maybe, maybe not. If not, why? Who knows. It's just not allowed to use map within a location block and that's just how it is, okay?

My dream web server has Nginx's capabilities and Lighttpd's Lua configuration files/scripts. Is that what ngx_lua does? I've heard of it before but never really gave it a look.