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I can't answer "why terraform was created" because I wasn't there. Also I only recently started working with it, so by far no expert on the matter. People who d

I can't answer "why terraform was created" because I wasn't there. Also I only recently started working with it, so by far no expert on the matter. People who don't know terraform often praise it for its platform-agnostic language, but there's an important caveat: the language is platform agnostic, not the templates one writes as they are riddled with platform-specific nouns. You can't take an Azure template and deploy it on AWS. Having said that, I (so far) like terraform for the same reason you noted: it's more readable and there is great tooling around it. I like state management and the ability to invoke lower-level components (as the shell breakout in your example) when you really have to. edit: > the declarative style, where you only describe the wanted state, not the steps you take to achieve that state That is a good and useful thing. It's called "desired configuration management", Ansible works the same way. When the underlying tool works well, it decides on its own how to implement what you want. If you ever watch terraform deploy a complex (10+ dissimilar resources) infrastructure it comes close to magic how it discovers what already has been done and what still needs to be done and in which order.

impoppy 4y ago
>That is a good and useful thing As long as you manage to pick it up, which I'm struggling with - you have to approach the problem from an entirely different angle with an entirely different paradigm. I'm struggling with adopting Nix on my personal machine for the same reason - I get `dnf install foo bar` but I don't get `I want foo and bar installed on my machine.` I want my machine to do the stuff only when I explicitly ask it to do stuff and only when I explicitly tell it when to do it. UPD: >If you ever watch terraform deploy a complex (10+ dissimilar resources) infrastructure it comes close to magic how it discovers what already has been done and what still needs to be done and in which order. But why would you have half-ready environments you aren't even aware of state of? Isn't our job about having as little magic, mysteries and unknown variables as possible? I'm a big opponent of magic and, probably, one of bigger fans of KISS - simple implementation, not simple usage.
- rgoulter 4y ago
  > But why would you have half-ready environments you aren't even aware of state of? Isn't our job about having as little magic, mysteries and unknown variables as possible? Abstractions are the art of revealing the right information. With an abstraction, you don't pay attention to lower-level details that aren't related to what you're interested in. This makes it much easier to write complex systems. When someone teaches you how to "hello world", you're able to go and write programs without needing to understand NAND gates & how a CPU works. I think "terraform lets you work at a level of abstraction above needing to care about what is deployed in what order" is a point in terraform's favour above bash-scripts.

impoppy 4y ago

>That is a good and useful thing As long as you manage to pick it up, which I'm struggling with - you have to approach the problem from an entirely different angle with an entirely different paradigm. I'm struggling with adopting Nix on my personal machine for the same reason - I get `dnf install foo bar` but I don't get `I want foo and bar installed on my machine.` I want my machine to do the stuff only when I explicitly ask it to do stuff and only when I explicitly tell it when to do it. UPD: >If you ever watch terraform deploy a complex (10+ dissimilar resources) infrastructure it comes close to magic how it discovers what already has been done and what still needs to be done and in which order. But why would you have half-ready environments you aren't even aware of state of? Isn't our job about having as little magic, mysteries and unknown variables as possible? I'm a big opponent of magic and, probably, one of bigger fans of KISS - simple implementation, not simple usage.

rgoulter 4y ago
> But why would you have half-ready environments you aren't even aware of state of? Isn't our job about having as little magic, mysteries and unknown variables as possible? Abstractions are the art of revealing the right information. With an abstraction, you don't pay attention to lower-level details that aren't related to what you're interested in. This makes it much easier to write complex systems. When someone teaches you how to "hello world", you're able to go and write programs without needing to understand NAND gates & how a CPU works. I think "terraform lets you work at a level of abstraction above needing to care about what is deployed in what order" is a point in terraform's favour above bash-scripts.