Merge two associative arrays at any nesting depth — like array_merge_recursive, but later values OVERWRITE earlier ones at the leaf level instead of combining them into arrays. Perfect for config-file overrides.
`os.Getenv` returns "" when unset — easy to miss. Wrap it with a typed helper that supplies defaults and parses numerics. Saves boilerplate at every config-read site.
Parse a `.env` file into a dict and optionally export to os.environ. Skips comments and blank lines, strips surrounding quotes — no python-dotenv dependency needed.
Validate process.env at boot-time and exit fast if anything's missing. The returned object is typed so the rest of the code reads `env.DATABASE_URL` instead of `process.env.DATABASE_URL!`.