[nu11ptr]

I'm not using both. The first version of my tool used Ansible. The second version used Terraform. They were written 4 years apart. My users are not devops savvy. They use runbook forms to call into my API giving them a very simple UI that requires almost zero input. The object model includes lifecycling so certain attributes can be changed, etc. and validation done to ensure only a correct network is output. This isn't required by everyone, but it wasn't done out of necessity on how I'm using the tools, but to satisfy the business problem I'm trying to solve (automate network deployment with as few human inputs as possible over the entire lifespan of a client and infrastructure).

I wasn't critiquing the author, but networks inherently have a lot of input data. Much of this is not of concern to the end user, hence why public clouds require almost zero input on the network side.

I agree that my object model is purpose built for our product. It would not work for someone else's network.

[thestepafter]

I’m currently using Ansible for something similar. Mind if I ask why you switched to Terraform?

[nu11ptr]

Faster: it uses a local state file, so it doesn't need to interrogate the devices every time.

Stateful: you don't have to manually track "present" and "absent" - you just omit and it will notice it needs to delete it

More standard: Writing HCL is very similar between providers. Every module in Ansible typically behaves pretty differently