I've written loads of fabfiles and a subclass of Task a few times. I've also wrestled with Puppet and Chef and been resoundly defeated by both.
Fabric does what we need it to do for now for provisioning & deployment. And frankly you can make it do whatever you want. "Programmatic use of SSH" isn't something to be scoffed at; it's simple yes but it also lets you do whatever the hell you want very simply.
Yes, of course. Nothing is wrong with using Fabric. It's a clear step above trying to use shell scripts to manage your servers and deployments. But what I am seeing across several comments is that tools like Puppet and Chef are clearly misunderstood by many developers. As a sysadmin myself, I would say that there is definitely a larger picture to the use of Puppet/Chef than what developers are looking for, and thus something like Fabric is much more suitable.
Fabric does what we need it to do for now for provisioning & deployment. And frankly you can make it do whatever you want. "Programmatic use of SSH" isn't something to be scoffed at; it's simple yes but it also lets you do whatever the hell you want very simply.