because of all the problems with that, especially at scale. obviously that works, since that's how we've done it since the before times, but the shortcomings of that are what has lead to the rise of SaaS.
What problems get fixed by this approach and how does it become less wall time to fully address it?
I'm phrasing it carefully because sometimes solutions are really just the original problem redecorated in some new paradigm of dealing with it and doesn't actually reduce the responsibility, time, skills or cognitive requirements to surmount it. For instance, many automation tools replaced writing shell scripts with YAML or Ruby DSL. You gotta solve the same exact problems in the end, but now you do it in YAML. What used to take 3 hours, now only takes 3 hours.
So, what problems are actually being fixed here?
Alternatively it may just bring you more joy to with with it, which is what a lot of these tools actually do. That's fine as well.
Terraform is better than the world of sh scripts that stopped working if you looked at the wrong and can't really test. True, it brings in new problems, but what used to take 3 hours to write and then 7 hours to do a smoke test of and then another week to apply across one on-prem DC with a team of five, can now actually be tested with Terratest, you can run it against 100 different AWS accounts/regions/whatever, and be done deploying in a couple of hours. Of course, you didn't have 100 AWS accounts before there was AWS, but that kind of isolation is required to operate these days (under certain conditions).
That's as far as how I read "now you do it in YAML", anyway, because you're right, we did just trade 3 hours of sh scripting for 3 hours of fighting with spaces across three yaml files.
The problem that is fixed is that of the deployment of dev environments. Instead of each individual developer at BigCo having to set up their laptop juuuuust right, BigCoITDept spins this up, pre configured, and the developer can be shuttled off to the code mines faster.
That makes sense. Control over the developers workstations with preconfigured IDEs that are centrally managed sounds like something many corporations would backflip for.
I personally hate it because I think subjecting artisnal crafts to taylorism rarely produces excellent results, but I know their sentiments and the vast majority of programs need be merely sufficient.
