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by maccard 488 days ago
I agree with your 80/20 take, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the only reason terraform is a good tool is because it leaves the messy stuff (the other 20%) to other tools and pretends it doesn’t exist.
1 comments

Yeah but it sure feels like what is in that 20% has to be common enough to have good best practices around it?

Or perhaps that 20% is simply the remainder of organizational complexity that cannot be standardized in a single tool like Terraform? Every org and every product have unique enough attributes that it is just not possible.

I dunno. I find terraform a uniquely fascinating product because it does so much yet leaves so much for you to do on your own.

> Or perhaps that 20% is simply the remainder of organizational complexity that cannot be standardized in a single tool like Terraform

I think this is what it is in practice. My opinion is that if these organisations had slightly less opinions terraform could probably solve another 15% and just leave the 5% that is _definitely_ organizational complexity.