[slillibri]

HCL isn’t a programming language. This seems to be the main misconception about it and Terraform.

[vrosas]

Any sufficiently large configuration language eventually becomes Turing complete (or close to it). See HCL, GitHub actions, kubernetes.

[mdaniel]

Kubernetes is not like the others in that list because it remains a declaration of intended state. There are for sure no "if", "loop", or even variables in the .yaml files. You may be thinking of the damn near infinite templating languages that generate said yaml, or even Kustomize that is JSONPatch-as-a-Service. GHA is not like the others because it is an imperative scripting language in yaml, not a "configuration language"

[cyberpunk]

It’s so infuriatingly close though which is what makes it so fucking annoying to work with. It has loops, conditionals, variables…

[thanatos519]

Indeed, it's the worst case of uncanny valley syndrome!