[dead10ck]

This stuck out to me too. Terraform absolutely does check the current reality of the state and applies changes to do what the HCL tells is to. They are either using terraform in a really weird way, or this article was written by someone that doesn't actually run terraform themselves.

[jrochkind1]

Phew! I thought I was misunderstanding terraform when I saw that.

Perhaps they are working with certain poorly implemented or buggy providers, and not realizing those providers were doing something different than terraform's properly working behavior that most providers implemented.

Bugs happen, but the first step is agreeing on intended behavior so we know what's a bug!