Deploy AWS Fargate Clusters with Pulumi

Pulumi makes it super easy to manage AWS ECS Fargate infrastructure

(Quick note: You can get all the code for this article on GitHub)

So this has been weighing on me for some time. I’ll just come right out and say it: I really don’t like Terraform. There, it’s out there now. Let the Terraform fanboys let loose their verbal assaults.

Thing is, I get that Terraform is considered the industry-standard on Infrastructure as Code. I fully recognise how impressive it is that Terraform covers so much stuff, from AWS to Azure DevOps to Google Cloud, and so on.

The problem for me is I’m a programmer. I write code. I use a number of different languages (.NET, Typescript, Javascript, Python are my faves), but in the end, they have the kinds of things which one expects from a programming language: Loops, conditionals, objects, inheritance, interfaces, etc. Those structures in a language make it possible for me to do what needs doing through my own programming, as well as by utilising the nigh-endless package sources available online.

Terraform is NOT a programming language. Terraform is, IMO, a declarative markup language. While some modicum of things like loops and conditionals can be accomplished, it feels tacked on, clunky, and never as clear or clean as a first-class programming language.

Also, if I want to do custom actions, such as call a random password generator, or call a library to run a series of database calls, this is, at best, tacked on in Terraform, or I have to hack my way around it.

I totally applaud Hashicorp for their tremendous accomplishment. It’s just not for a programmer like me.

I love IaC (what’s not to love about spinning up infrastructure in code like some kind of sorcerer?!), but never loved the structure or syntax of Terraform. What’s a brother to do?

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