SE-Radio Episode 289: James Turnbull on Declarative Programming with Terraform
James Turnbull rejoins the show with Robert Blumen for a conversation mostly about Terraform, as well as a bit about Puppet. Terraform is a declarative programming tool for automating infrastructure resource creation; it targets resource providers, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Digital Ocean, and other cloud and SAAS back ends. The discussion explores the programming language used by Terraform (TF); what TF does when it runs; why a declarative language is a good fit for infrastructure resource creation; and how infrastructure operation is becoming more like programming, with a build pipeline, testing, and deployment. The episode considers TF’s internals, its similarities and differences with Puppet, and some speculation about whether declarative programming is the future of programming.
About SE-Radio
Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the
professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting
educational resource, not a newscast. Three to four times per
month, we publish a new episode talking to experts from the
software engineering world about the full range of topics that
matter to professional developers.
All SE Radio episodes feature original content; we don’t record
conferences or talks given in other venues.
SE Radio is managed by the volunteers and staff of IEEE Software,
a leading technical magazine for software professionals published
by the IEEE Computer Society. All content is licensed under the
Creative Commons 2.5 license.
SE Radio was founded in January 2006 by Markus Voelter. It joined
forces with IEEE Software in February 2012.