Discussion on "4 ultimate reasons to prefer AWS CDK over Terraform"

Monica Colangelo · 2022-12-05T14:22:12.306Z

There is an Italian version of this article; if you'd like to read it click here. Over the past few months I have been using AWS CDK for some projects, and every time I started talking about it, someone would ask: why should I abandon the tool I am ...

Nice article. Dont know CDK, but agree with the other comments about Cloudformation being horrible. Now I never have to know what happens, maybe it is OK. Rewriting terrform/terragrunt scripts is probably not worth it for us. Of course having a 'normal' programming language is a big asset.

These are all good reasons, and I would jump on CDK if it didn't have Cloudformation underneath. The issue of Cloudformation is not just its horrible syntax, but that when it fails it fails hard. There is no rollback and there is no roll forward. You have to call AWS Support to unstuck it. And it's slow.

The one super advantage I see for CDK is that if you go with it, you are on AWS's golden path. All the other tooling you really want is there and all the future tooling AWS brings will be on top of CDK (which means it's on top of Cloudformation unfortunately).

The other problem is if your organization already committed to and has its entire infrastructure based on Terraform, I don't know of anyway to transition other than throw away the old and start over with CDK.

I concur. The first two points you mention in my opinion balance each other out: even if Cloudformation fails "hard," as you say, at least you have the support that can help you (with Terraform you don't have any--and even it sometimes runs aground). As for transforming an organization's entire code base--it's probably not worth it. Also, I work with organizations that are just now starting to approach IaC, and they still choose Terraform because it's very simple and doesn't require developer skills, and it's easier to find staff (especially from Operations) who are able to use it.

Yes, but

All AWS CDK applications require Node.js 10.13 or later, even if you work in Python, Java, C#, or Go.

I think it's a significant disadvantage. Instead of using only one binary file (terraform), you have a chain of dependents.

From a purely philosophical point of view, I could agree... but in the end, code execution still has to be launched from a CI pipeline and not from one's own PC. So instrumenting a docker with Node or a docker with Terraform makes no difference.

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4 ultimate reasons to prefer AWS CDK over Terraform

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