> The Cfer project that I contribute to [...] is the thinnest possible wrapper around CloudFormation that we could come up with. I've found preprocessing Cloud

> The Cfer project that I contribute to [...] is the thinnest possible wrapper around CloudFormation that we could come up with. I've found preprocessing CloudFormation YAML using a standard template language (e.g., ERB) to be the thinnest possible wrapper around CloudFormation for providing if statements and loops without breaking our backs. Cfer looks nice and lean, but it still adds another domain-specific language on top of the stack while ERB is part of Ruby's existing standard library. Granted, using an existing template preprocessor or a lightweight DSL can both work well and I think it's largely a matter of preference as to which feels thinner/easier to work with. I agree with your assessment of HCL, a range of tooling choices for CloudFormation are largely possible because CloudFormation runs on standard JSON/YAML documents rather than the domain-specific, vendor-specific Hashicorp Configuration Language that lacks as robust tooling and support across languages/IDEs.