4 ms·

Show HN: Generate code and diagrams from live infrastructure, AWS/Azure/GCP

29 points by frederich 4y ago

diceduckmonk 4y ago
> Use Javascript, a true programming language, no more YAML or Domain Specific language. This appears to be a jab at Terraform but Terraform's declarative language is supposed to be a step forward from ad-hoc provisioning scripts. One of the issues with imperative scripts is you have to be mindful of intermediate state whereas Terraform allows the users to just think about the initial and final state.
- l3uwin 4y ago
  Pretty much this. I don't know any DevOps engineers begging to make their configs even less readable
- jaimehrubiks 4y ago
  I must say that I prefer the declarative nature of terraform, but it's true that in many cases I've spend ages trying to create variables through loops, whereas in a regular programming language it would have taken me minutes. And sometimes I also face things impossible to do.
- blowski 4y ago
  I use simple Bash or Python scripts while prototyping, then Terraform for anything that needs maintenance in production.
- yazaddaruvala 4y ago
  > declarative language is supposed to be a step forward from ad-hoc provisioning scripts. The best config systems I've seen leverage a programatic framework to generate declarative JSON/YAML. Rather than needing to bolt one on top.
pfoof 4y ago
I must try this out, this graph thing might save me a lot of headaches trying to understand previous DevOps engineer
theptip 4y ago
Seems like a potentially useful tool. Another related approach is https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/terraformer https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/terraformer ("reverse Terraform"), which might be better if your end goal is to build Terraform scripts for existing infra. However I like the idea of using these visualizations to grok or monitor infra; say as a Platform or Security engineering team, you might want to keep an eye on specific classes of resource like storage buckets, load balancers, etc.
voidr 4y ago
A while ago I started using the AWS CDK and never looked back, I can write all the infrastructure code in a real programming language with auto complete and proper IDE support, no more hacky YAML syntax for simple if statements! Issue with using config for these things is that more complex structures don't scale that well, in code you can do abstractions to make everything easier to reason about. https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/ https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/
- ttfkam 4y ago
  And then there are projects like CDK-Dia that are taking infra documentation one step further. https://github.com/pistazie/cdk-dia https://github.com/pistazie/cdk-dia

29 points by frederich 4y ago

> Use Javascript, a true programming language, no more YAML or Domain Specific language. This appears to be a jab at Terraform but Terraform's declarative language is supposed to be a step forward from ad-hoc provisioning scripts. One of the issues with imperative scripts is you have to be mindful of intermediate state whereas Terraform allows the users to just think about the initial and final state.

l3uwin 4y ago
Pretty much this. I don't know any DevOps engineers begging to make their configs even less readable
jaimehrubiks 4y ago
I must say that I prefer the declarative nature of terraform, but it's true that in many cases I've spend ages trying to create variables through loops, whereas in a regular programming language it would have taken me minutes. And sometimes I also face things impossible to do.
blowski 4y ago
I use simple Bash or Python scripts while prototyping, then Terraform for anything that needs maintenance in production.
yazaddaruvala 4y ago
> declarative language is supposed to be a step forward from ad-hoc provisioning scripts. The best config systems I've seen leverage a programatic framework to generate declarative JSON/YAML. Rather than needing to bolt one on top.

pfoof 4y ago

I must try this out, this graph thing might save me a lot of headaches trying to understand previous DevOps engineer

theptip 4y ago

Seems like a potentially useful tool. Another related approach is https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/terraformer https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/terraformer ("reverse Terraform"), which might be better if your end goal is to build Terraform scripts for existing infra. However I like the idea of using these visualizations to grok or monitor infra; say as a Platform or Security engineering team, you might want to keep an eye on specific classes of resource like storage buckets, load balancers, etc.

voidr 4y ago

A while ago I started using the AWS CDK and never looked back, I can write all the infrastructure code in a real programming language with auto complete and proper IDE support, no more hacky YAML syntax for simple if statements! Issue with using config for these things is that more complex structures don't scale that well, in code you can do abstractions to make everything easier to reason about. https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/ https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/

ttfkam 4y ago
And then there are projects like CDK-Dia that are taking infra documentation one step further. https://github.com/pistazie/cdk-dia https://github.com/pistazie/cdk-dia