Terraform has lists and maps, which takes care of a number of use cases at least. Now, if you want types as opposed to data structures then you start to get int

Terraform has lists and maps, which takes care of a number of use cases at least. Now, if you want types as opposed to data structures then you start to get into structures that are tough to serialize into JSON that is helpful for interoperability with even less featureful languages / DSLs. Instead of if statements, pattern matching constructs would probably suffice for avoiding some of the concerns with avoiding loops and branching (limits and predictability upon the DAG and resulting state machine being generated as I understand it). In any case, I've found plenty of power by using custom data providers that use whatever logic I want and feed that to Terraform providers and modules to instantiate. I think the level of maturity with the Terraform community is still in the early stages and emphasis will shift to data provider based constructs for orchestration.