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by carlosf 1836 days ago
At this point one might consider using a real language and common software practices for type checking, extending, modularization, testing, etc... Instead of building an ecosystem just to keep Infrastructure as Yaml sane.

My experience with Pulumi and AWS CDK is absolutely brilliant in this regard, hopefully good DevOps/SRE/WhateverNewTerm practices and patterns will reassemble good software development practices in the future.
2 comments
dqpb 1836 days ago
Cue has a unique lattice type system that allows you to refine a property from type->constraint->value, but does not allow you override an existing value (or change it in any way that conflicts with the existing type/constraints).

In my view, this is the insight and value proposition that sets cue apart from everything else, including general programming languages.

Inheritance + property overriding is the source of most problems in configuration because you can never know if a value is the source of truth.

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sdboyer 1836 days ago
Cannot +1 this hard enough. It is the kernel from which all other useful things flow.
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sdboyer 1836 days ago
> real language

In what sense is CUE not a real language?

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Micoloth 1836 days ago
I think parent means a General Purpose language, i.e. capable of computations.

Personally, on one hand I know allowing computations into configuration immediatly destroys any hope of having a tidy, rational schema in real word projects.

On the other hand though, i do believe configuration and code should be build with related tools, possibly the same tool- or at least tools using the same syntax!

(a bit like the json syntax is the same as a Python dict syntax, except this is the terrible example that is so poorly thought out that does more harm than good)

This unlocks a much greater degree of freedom and power than all the gluing together technologies that we have to do...

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sdboyer 1836 days ago
If this is the sense in which the comment is intended - CUE is capable of some kinds of computation. It's just not Turing complete.

My 2c - thus far, i've found the language features enabled by this constraint much more useful than the expressiveness lost - at least, for the purposes i've chosen.

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heywherelogingo 1836 days ago
I think he means one language that includes config, instead of yaml plus yaml-taming ecosystem.
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