Part of it is the multiple layers of abstraction. You aren't really sure what is going on when you run terraform apply. I recommend turning the TF_LOG environm

Part of it is the multiple layers of abstraction. You aren't really sure what is going on when you run terraform apply. I recommend turning the TF_LOG environment variable all the way up so you get super verbose logging. Then you can actually see what terraform is doing and it actually isn't too bad. It makes a bunch of calls to AWS one by one. My guess is you just haven't worked with infrastructure that much so it is familiarity problem. You are also using a tool that has a very high level of abstraction. So getting more familiar with how infrastructure is setup (even manually) will help. Some other things: - Visualizing things by drawing things out can help - Keep the AWS web console open and you can see Terraform creating the resources on the fly by refreshing