[jrochkind1]

True, but as a _programmer_, working on a _new to me platform or package_, I am _very_ reluctant to add an extra third-party abstraction layer which requires it's own evaluation of quality and stability and some learning curve. It's gotta be pretty clear to me that it really is "what everyone else is doing", or I've gotta get more experience with the underlying thing to be able to judge for myself better.

I've definitely been burned many times by adding an extra tool or layer meant to make things easier, that ends up not, for all manner of reasons. I think we all have.

[wgjordan]

Worth noting that "nearly 31,000 AWS CloudFormation stacks were created for Prime Day" [1], so Amazon uses CloudFormation heavily internally. Not a guarantee that it's what 'everyone else is doing', but it's a good indicator of quality/stability and that it will remain a core service within the AWS ecosystem for some time.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/prime-day-2017-powered-by-a...

[hayd]

I think they're talking about a CF template generator being the third-party software (I could be wrong).