3 ms·

Would you rather manually manage things through a UI? It’s not like IAC doesn’t solve problems. Sure it introduces some and isn’t optimal but I’m curious to hea

by klysm 5y ago

Would you rather manually manage things through a UI? It’s not like IAC doesn’t solve problems. Sure it introduces some and isn’t optimal but I’m curious to hear your solution.

fivre 5y ago
No. IAC absolutely absolutely solves problems (repeatability and a source of truth you can put in source control, among others) that GUI management has no good solution for. What OP is getting at is that IAC is often not /sold/ this way, it's sold as way to make managing complex systems simpler, in the sense that someone with less expertise can use it effectively, because marketers and salespeople love promising something that will remove all that pesky setup work and let you start on whatever it is you actually want to do. This can be true for some tools (e.g. I don't have a great deal of knowledge about compiler internals or assembly, but my compiled code still does what I wrote it to do), but not necessarily all. Managing an AWS environment is an inherently complex task, and IAC tools can't reduce that complexity without being prescriptive. We may in the distant future get to the point where prescriptive configuration is fine (I trust that my compiler will make better assembly optimization decisions than I ever will), but we're not there now. What we have now addresses UX issues with using GUIs for these tasks.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I gave you my solution. Write typescript or Go or whatever that emits the static configs that describe the desired state of the world and then feed those into the IAC engine which will diff them against the actual state of the world and make the requisite changes. It’s still “iac”, it’s just simpler.
- klysm 4y ago
  So.... pulumi? That sounds a whole lot like how Terraform, Pulumi and kubernetes work. But you just want to roll it yourself?

3 ms·

Would you rather manually manage things through a UI? It’s not like IAC doesn’t solve problems. Sure it introduces some and isn’t optimal but I’m curious to hea

by klysm 5y ago

Would you rather manually manage things through a UI? It’s not like IAC doesn’t solve problems. Sure it introduces some and isn’t optimal but I’m curious to hear your solution.

fivre 5y ago
No. IAC absolutely absolutely solves problems (repeatability and a source of truth you can put in source control, among others) that GUI management has no good solution for. What OP is getting at is that IAC is often not /sold/ this way, it's sold as way to make managing complex systems simpler, in the sense that someone with less expertise can use it effectively, because marketers and salespeople love promising something that will remove all that pesky setup work and let you start on whatever it is you actually want to do. This can be true for some tools (e.g. I don't have a great deal of knowledge about compiler internals or assembly, but my compiled code still does what I wrote it to do), but not necessarily all. Managing an AWS environment is an inherently complex task, and IAC tools can't reduce that complexity without being prescriptive. We may in the distant future get to the point where prescriptive configuration is fine (I trust that my compiler will make better assembly optimization decisions than I ever will), but we're not there now. What we have now addresses UX issues with using GUIs for these tasks.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I gave you my solution. Write typescript or Go or whatever that emits the static configs that describe the desired state of the world and then feed those into the IAC engine which will diff them against the actual state of the world and make the requisite changes. It’s still “iac”, it’s just simpler.
- klysm 4y ago
  So.... pulumi? That sounds a whole lot like how Terraform, Pulumi and kubernetes work. But you just want to roll it yourself?