[__jem]

One of the big benefits of using an actual programming language rather than HCL is that it allows you to define abstractions / use the type system to enforce these invariants. I find this massively preferable to something like a linter in terms of being able to provide a nice API to engineers who might need a little more help defining their resources.

[fodkodrasz]

Or you could also use the cloud provider's api from a real programming language, or generate terraform code from it.

After having tried Pulumi I felt it does not bring the claimed pros, you need to write code in a non-idiomatic way, and coming up with abstractions for the representation of the stuff you talk about takes more time than just write proper terraform, and perform proper thorough reviews, which also facilitate knowledge sharing in the organization.

Also then you'd have 3 layers as sources of bugs, instead of just one: your code (you tested it properly, didn't you! How much time saved as opposed to just doing proper reviews!), pulumi itself (has faced its bugs on such a simple task as setting up an aws lambda), and terraform it uses under the hood.

In my experience pulumi doesn't solve problems for the business, but lets engineers waste time and money on playing around with their NIH abstractions. We tried it, and dumped it, and went back to terraform, which just works.

[x3n0ph3n3]

Oh, I agree! I use pulumi for my own personal projects, but I don't have the time to build a DSL on top of it pulumi just to establish the same guardrails my team needs that I'd otherwise get for free.

[pharmakom]

A real language also presents more foot guns no?

In HCL it’s difficult to break repeatability, for example by querying external sources in an uncontrolled way.