I've indeed stretched the concept by equating Chef and Puppet (I guess the latter is closer to TF).
To be more accurate, I'd say that Chef has a declarative structure supported by the imperative constructs of the underlying language, and this is what makes for me a big difference.
Consider the for loop as example. By the time it was added (v0.12), there was a (200 pages) commercial book available. And there are people in this discussion stuck at v0.11.
The difference in the declarative vs. imperative nature, as I see it now that the for loop is implemented in TF, is that it's embedded inside resources, that is, it fits strictly a declarative approach, and has limits. In Chef, you can place a for loop wherever you prefer.
Object instances is also another significant difference. It took a while for TF to be able to move (if I remember correctly) module instances around (that is, to promote them to "more" first class citizens), which made a big difference. In an imperative language, accessing/moving instances around is a core part of the language. In Chef, pretty much everything is global - both in the good and in the bad. But certainly the good part is that refactoring is way more flexible.
I think TF has always been plagued by repetition; in my view, this is inherent in the "more" declarative approach (since they're trying to embed imperative constructs in the language).
To be more accurate, I'd say that Chef has a declarative structure supported by the imperative constructs of the underlying language, and this is what makes for me a big difference.
Consider the for loop as example. By the time it was added (v0.12), there was a (200 pages) commercial book available. And there are people in this discussion stuck at v0.11.
The difference in the declarative vs. imperative nature, as I see it now that the for loop is implemented in TF, is that it's embedded inside resources, that is, it fits strictly a declarative approach, and has limits. In Chef, you can place a for loop wherever you prefer.
Object instances is also another significant difference. It took a while for TF to be able to move (if I remember correctly) module instances around (that is, to promote them to "more" first class citizens), which made a big difference. In an imperative language, accessing/moving instances around is a core part of the language. In Chef, pretty much everything is global - both in the good and in the bad. But certainly the good part is that refactoring is way more flexible.
I think TF has always been plagued by repetition; in my view, this is inherent in the "more" declarative approach (since they're trying to embed imperative constructs in the language).