10 ms·

Since HN threads often attract a bit of a negative vibe, may I take the opportunity to say to any Hashicorp employees reading this that I think your products ar

by laingc 7y ago

Since HN threads often attract a bit of a negative vibe, may I take the opportunity to say to any Hashicorp employees reading this that I think your products are fantastic. Terraform is particularly excellent, but everything you produce is carefully designed, well built, and reliable. So great job, Hashicorp. Keep it up.

latchkey 7y ago
The product is fantastic, but don't expect upgrades to work. 0.11->0.12 totally hosed me. Not necessarily because of TF itself, but because of the scaleway provider I was using changed everything around such that coming up with the right state file that didn't destroy all my existing instances, was very difficult. I eventually gave up and found someone to do my hosting for me cause it was just too much work to deal with TF changes over time. I also feel like the concept of looping is a weird afterthought. I want to create 10 vms of the exact same type. Now I have to build a module for reusability, remember to put count everywhere and use dynamic variables all over the place, after studying all the documentation 1000 times. I wish this had been thought out a bit more.
- sl1ck731 7y ago
  That's because looping was an afterthought. I think the project was initially supposed to be a purely declarative language, with Hashicorp pushing back against proposals for common functions. Then they succumbed to demand with HCL 2. As much as I like Terraform in the general sense, their obsession with this weird DSL bothers me immensely. Alternatively, I'm really enjoying the AWS CDK and hope Pulumi garners some more traction here.
  - latchkey 7y ago
    Oh, thanks for the tip on Pulumi. I will definitely take a look at in the future. I agree, HCL is weird and I always wondered why people didn't just write this stuff as code. Using Typescript is great for this, but I wonder why they need to support 'any language'... seems like a documentation/support nightmare. Just do one thing well!
chucky_z 7y ago
I realize now my comment comes across as pretty bad, but I love (and use) every single Hashicorp product. They are the company that gets the entire DevOps paradigm more than any other single entity.

by laingc 7y ago

latchkey 7y ago

The product is fantastic, but don't expect upgrades to work. 0.11->0.12 totally hosed me. Not necessarily because of TF itself, but because of the scaleway provider I was using changed everything around such that coming up with the right state file that didn't destroy all my existing instances, was very difficult. I eventually gave up and found someone to do my hosting for me cause it was just too much work to deal with TF changes over time. I also feel like the concept of looping is a weird afterthought. I want to create 10 vms of the exact same type. Now I have to build a module for reusability, remember to put count everywhere and use dynamic variables all over the place, after studying all the documentation 1000 times. I wish this had been thought out a bit more.

sl1ck731 7y ago
That's because looping was an afterthought. I think the project was initially supposed to be a purely declarative language, with Hashicorp pushing back against proposals for common functions. Then they succumbed to demand with HCL 2. As much as I like Terraform in the general sense, their obsession with this weird DSL bothers me immensely. Alternatively, I'm really enjoying the AWS CDK and hope Pulumi garners some more traction here.
- latchkey 7y ago
  Oh, thanks for the tip on Pulumi. I will definitely take a look at in the future. I agree, HCL is weird and I always wondered why people didn't just write this stuff as code. Using Typescript is great for this, but I wonder why they need to support 'any language'... seems like a documentation/support nightmare. Just do one thing well!

chucky_z 7y ago

I realize now my comment comes across as pretty bad, but I love (and use) every single Hashicorp product. They are the company that gets the entire DevOps paradigm more than any other single entity.