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"I can't speak to Terraform because I haven't used it" Well, then maybe you should try it before you decide it doesn't work! I'll definitely be giving Pulumi a

"I can't speak to Terraform because I haven't used it" Well, then maybe you should try it before you decide it doesn't work! I'll definitely be giving Pulumi a try, but honestly Terraform works really well and I'm happy using it. It's a nice idea to be able to have a programming language you're familiar with available to do infra work, but deploying and managing infrastructure is a totally different problem domain than writing an application. If the concern is letting developers that don't have much ops experience architect an infrastructure, or you have recent graduates that "don't know HCL", then you have quite a higher learning curve than you actually think you do. I've never once thought "I really wish I could just use TypeScript for configuring my infrastructure". If that's you, great! Call me when you hit scale and your ops team needs to refactor it.

throwaway894345 7y ago
> Well, then maybe you should try it before you decide it doesn't work! Based on the assumptions I called out about it, it necessarily can't work as well as a general purpose language. I intend to try it to see if my assumptions are correct or not. > It's a nice idea to be able to have a programming language you're familiar with available to do infra work, but deploying and managing infrastructure is a totally different problem domain than writing an application. It's not a hard domain. Developers can write a program that evaluates to YAML--it's not hard. The hard part is applying that YAML to the infrastructure in an efficient way, but programmers don't need to worry about this because Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubectl, etc do it for them. > If the concern is letting developers that don't have much ops experience architect an infrastructure, or you have recent graduates that "don't know HCL", then you have quite a higher learning curve than you actually think you do. "Learn Ops + HCL" is a bigger learning curve than "learn ops". Notably, learning two things at the same time is a bigger problem than learning them both individually. But you're right that using a standard programming language isn't a substitute for learning how to architect infrastructure--I never said it did--only that it removes the unnecessary complexity and unfamiliarity imposed by HCL. > I've never once thought "I really wish I could just use TypeScript for configuring my infrastructure". If that's you, great! Call me when you hit scale and your ops team needs to refactor it. Ha! If the industry hasn't moved past Terraform in 5 years time, it will only be because HCL has adopted enough of the general purpose programming language featureset as to remain competitive. That's certainly its trajectory.
- cheese4242 7y ago
  > Ha! If the industry hasn't moved past Terraform in 5 years time, it will only be because HCL has adopted enough of the general purpose programming language featureset as to remain competitive. That's certainly its trajectory. Quite a statement to make for somebody who has never used Terraform.
  - throwaway894345 7y ago
    I've been keeping tabs on it for a while. Feel free to point out where I'm mistaken.
    - cheese4242 7y ago
      Further up in the thread you said: > The idea is reuse. YAML (and probably Terraform, though I can't speak to it directly) doesn't give you many facilities for reusing blocks of config, especially if they vary subtly in some parameterized way. Doesn't sound like you have been "keeping tabs on it" very well then. That comment implies you lack even basic knowledge of Terraform.
      - throwaway894345 7y ago
        Yeah, I meant that Terraform is more rigid with respect to reusability than a general purpose language like Python. This isn't a controversial point; the controversy is whether that's a bug or a feature. I think it's a feature, and to the extent that Terraform is becoming increasingly flexible, I would say I'm vindicated in my position.
        juliosueiras 7y ago
        I think the person above is mostly pointing out about dynamic blocks , since that do allow abstracting blocks of config and also allow subtle differences
- mtalantikite 7y ago

throwaway894345 7y ago

> Well, then maybe you should try it before you decide it doesn't work! Based on the assumptions I called out about it, it necessarily can't work as well as a general purpose language. I intend to try it to see if my assumptions are correct or not. > It's a nice idea to be able to have a programming language you're familiar with available to do infra work, but deploying and managing infrastructure is a totally different problem domain than writing an application. It's not a hard domain. Developers can write a program that evaluates to YAML--it's not hard. The hard part is applying that YAML to the infrastructure in an efficient way, but programmers don't need to worry about this because Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubectl, etc do it for them. > If the concern is letting developers that don't have much ops experience architect an infrastructure, or you have recent graduates that "don't know HCL", then you have quite a higher learning curve than you actually think you do. "Learn Ops + HCL" is a bigger learning curve than "learn ops". Notably, learning two things at the same time is a bigger problem than learning them both individually. But you're right that using a standard programming language isn't a substitute for learning how to architect infrastructure--I never said it did--only that it removes the unnecessary complexity and unfamiliarity imposed by HCL. > I've never once thought "I really wish I could just use TypeScript for configuring my infrastructure". If that's you, great! Call me when you hit scale and your ops team needs to refactor it. Ha! If the industry hasn't moved past Terraform in 5 years time, it will only be because HCL has adopted enough of the general purpose programming language featureset as to remain competitive. That's certainly its trajectory.

cheese4242 7y ago
> Ha! If the industry hasn't moved past Terraform in 5 years time, it will only be because HCL has adopted enough of the general purpose programming language featureset as to remain competitive. That's certainly its trajectory. Quite a statement to make for somebody who has never used Terraform.
- throwaway894345 7y ago
  I've been keeping tabs on it for a while. Feel free to point out where I'm mistaken.
  - cheese4242 7y ago
    Further up in the thread you said: > The idea is reuse. YAML (and probably Terraform, though I can't speak to it directly) doesn't give you many facilities for reusing blocks of config, especially if they vary subtly in some parameterized way. Doesn't sound like you have been "keeping tabs on it" very well then. That comment implies you lack even basic knowledge of Terraform.
    - throwaway894345 7y ago
      Yeah, I meant that Terraform is more rigid with respect to reusability than a general purpose language like Python. This isn't a controversial point; the controversy is whether that's a bug or a feature. I think it's a feature, and to the extent that Terraform is becoming increasingly flexible, I would say I'm vindicated in my position.
      - juliosueiras 7y ago
        I think the person above is mostly pointing out about dynamic blocks , since that do allow abstracting blocks of config and also allow subtle differences
mtalantikite 7y ago