One doesn't need much ruby to get going with puppet. You need to learn the declarative puppet DSL, which is arguably an even bigger barrier. Automatic list ex

One doesn't need much ruby to get going with puppet. You need to learn the declarative puppet DSL, which is arguably an even bigger barrier. Automatic list expansion, for example, is a nice feature. But you can't have independent or nested variables, as with an imperative loop. So you wind up having to break each list into its own definition and then combine them all. The sysadmins I worked with were definitely not keen on having to think that way on a regular basis just to get some things done. That said, I also disagree that puppet "sucks." It's good at what it claims to be good at so long as you can deal with its quirks.