[skywhopper]

Nothing new or interesting in this article. I find the idea that a general purpose programming language is better for infra/config-as-code to be utterly laughable. No one is out there saying DSLs are “easy”. They are just far more constrained in a way that’s often useful.

His examples of confusing Terraform are not particularly interesting without some counterexample showing how his preferred CDK-style alternative is better (spoiler: it isn’t any less messy).

In fact, CDK/Pulumi-style programming is actually just an imperative-style wrapper that generates the underlying declarative IaC code. You might even call it a reverse DSL. But adding one more layer of abstraction away from what’s actually happening isn’t actually useful. It just adds more seams and more opportunities for leaky abstractions. Using a generic programming language to wrap your declarative infrastructure actually encourages more layers of abstraction. Not a good idea.

Could Terraform’s language be improved? Yes. But replacing it with JavaScript or Python is not the answer.