[eropple]

Plenty of those DSLs already exist, the cfer project[1] that I contribute to and SparkleFormation being two I can vouch for. I don't find CloudFormation particularly annoying or difficult, and certainly better than the alternatives (BOSH/Terraform/etc.), given such a wrapper, and cfn-init with CloudFormation metadata is miles ahead of "well, install Consul and connect to the cluster and eventually reach the state you want to be in" for my uses.

[1] - https://github.com/seanedwards/cfer

[2] - https://github.com/sparkleformation/sparkle_formation

[jonaf]

I maintain a ruby dsl as well at http://github.com/bazaarvoice/cloudformation-ruby-dsl

The format is a weak argument against cloud formation. It has some negatives. This one is easily overcome.

[ivarrian]

And I salute you! We heavily use the Ruby DSL.