[okhudeira]

I think what you're doing with pulumi is the right answer and it's only a matter of time before this becomes the norm. The author's examples could easily be done with plain ol' JS/ES/TS with more far more extensibility and customization when the need arises.

I also feel this is where JSX got it right. Instead of creating yet-another-templating-language (looking at you Angular!), they used JavaScript and did a great job of outlining how interpolation works. Any new templating language is always going to be missing some key feature you expect out of a general programming language and your customers will continue to ask for more features.

Take for example Terraform and HCL, they're continually adding more and more [templating features](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/master/website/d...) and [functions](https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/interpolation.ht...) because there's so many different ways to skin configuration/infrastructure as code. What if TF just expect a "computed" JSON object and it's left up to the developer to figure out how to put it together?

I'm gonna keep an eye on Pulumi and hope to be able to use in a real project soon.

[jstrat]

Crazy idea, but couldn't we use JSX for configuration?

<AutoScalingGroup name='Main cluster'> <LaunchConfig imageId='ami-xx'>...</LaunchConfig> </AutoScalingGroup>

Paired with Typescript, we would have the clearness of a declarative language, with the power and flexibility of a real language that is also easy to extend and navigate.

As a bonus, most tooling already exists.

[Q6T46nT668w6i3m]

You just invented XML!

[akdor1154]

This is sitting right on the genius/insanity border.

[ranyefet]

I had the exact same idea! Does something like that exists?

[int_19h]

In .NET land, there's Razor, which was designed from get go to mesh well with C# syntax such that you need a minimal amount of control characters:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/mvc/views/razor...