I agree with most of your points, but having used other systems, I just have to point out that all configuration management systems are footguns that give you a

I agree with most of your points, but having used other systems, I just have to point out that all configuration management systems are footguns that give you armor over 50% of your foot, and let you aim how you please. I think salt helps to enforce that you can't arbitrarily compose disparate datasources with overlapping namespaces and have it magic it's way to a sane solution. Chef tries to compose its data via a very sensible yet hard to get right ordering mechanism. Salt says "nope, you overlap, it breaks, and you get to fix it". I prefer salt's approach but what I like more is the temptation to write an external pillar provider that will do the right thing for me when I get to that point. It's imperfect but quite powerful.