On: Terraform Scripting Concepts

[danw1979]

“script” seems like absolutely the wrong terminology for something as die-hard-declarative as Terraform.

In my circle of engineers we tend to call it “code” but this isn’t ideal either - implies a general purpose language.

[chenrui → danw1979]

`script` is bad, but `code` is fine. In this case, it is really a DSL language for cloud configurations.

[jk563 → danw1979]

My circle also just use "code" as far as I'm aware, though I tend to think of it as a definition instead. Template would also fit but you can use templates within Terraform so that could be confusing.

[jen20 → jk563]

The official name for .tf files is a “configuration”, per the code base.

[rch → jen20]

Which makes sense in the context of managing "configuration as code".

Once configuration is code, i.e. Turing complete, something has gone awry.

[jen20 → rch]

Indeed - infrastructure being defined with a declarative model makes perfect sense. One need not use a DSL to achieve that though.

[verdverm → danw1979]

Comprehension, like list comprehension, might be a better term

[chrismaeda → danw1979]

model