IMO CF (and dependent APIs that use CF servers internally) is strictly worse since it has state, but that state lives server side and the only way to influence

IMO CF (and dependent APIs that use CF servers internally) is strictly worse since it has state, but that state lives server side and the only way to influence it seems to be to mock around with destroy and rebuild and hope for the best (in my experience it can easily get into a deadlock). TF at least directly talks to the provider APIs like S3 and EC2 and you get their error messages when something goes wrong. When TF locks itself up I know how to deal with it myself without needing anyone‘s support (delete the respective key in the state backing KVS). That being said I agree with OP - making it stateless would be even better.