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0 pointsAtNightWeCode2y ago0 comments

This is perhaps the most incorrect post you will ever find on HN. I am not a huge fan of Terraform. However, TF is made for infra not config. There are several tools out there to manage config like Salt, Ansible and so on.

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docandrew2y ago

You can definitely use Ansible to provision infra as well. Whether that’s the right tool for the job is a matter of taste.

pa7ch2y ago

Honest question, what do you consider config vs infra? What is infra if not configuring a system to run?

dbingham2y ago

Infra is defining the servers that should be running. Config is writing configuration files to a running server.

Cloud blurs the line, since a lot of cloud offerings are managed where you're really doing both at once when you define the managed offering.

throwawaaarrgh2y ago

Let's not continue this cargo cult mumbo jumbo.

Terraform is literally a program that looks at a declarative configuration file, looks at a state file, queries some APIs, and then submits some API calls. That is all it does.

There is no "infrastructure", or "config", or "cloud". It's literally just calling HTTPS APIs, the same way it would call a system call or a library function. Call function, pass input, receive output.

There is no magic sauce. There is no difference between it and any other tool that has a declarative configuration, a state, and operations to try to change things to match a desired state.

It's all configuration management. The words "infra", "orchestration", "cloud", etc is marketing bullshit. It's all just software.

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rirze2y ago

It's better framed as infrastructure orchestration vs infrastructure configuration. Orchestration is more about herding the resources while configuration is about delving into the instance/server/resource environment to make changes. The terms are pretty arbitrary IMO, but those are the vocabulary used in the industry.

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