# AWS CDK 29 Hacker News commenters recommended AWS CDK and 15 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (4 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended for defining AWS infrastructure in real programming languages with sensible defaults, though critics note its CloudFormation foundation and complexity. ## Why people recommend it - Infrastructure as real code (3 comments): "generating infrastructure definitions from a regular, testable language using all the same tools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231204)) "Being able to use programming languages for infra makes composition better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47569734)) "Infrastructure as real code." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46909174)) - Easy high-level AWS stacks (3 comments): "AWS already provides a sleuth of high level constructs with sensible defaults." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46865291)) "Higher level CDK constructs do the same thing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861961)) "It makes creating an AWS stack really easy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46511732)) - Preferred over Terraform for AWS (3 comments): "I've been very happy using cdk for interacting with aws. Much better than terraform and the like." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082989)) "Cdk has far exceeded Ansible and Terraform in my experience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46909242)) "CDK is far better than Terraform." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47084086)) - Full AWS integration, no third party (3 comments): "If you fully embrace all the stuff they give you then it's straightforward to declare everything and it all works together." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548764)) "it means my major dependency for IaC is my cloud vendor and not a third party" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46222632)) "I'd rather just use the AWS CDK and CloudFormation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861888)) ## What people warn about - Built on CloudFormation, opaque and slow (3 comments): "slow deployment: CDK is layer on top of cloud formation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862169)) "CDK on AWS itself uses CFN, which is a dog's breakfast and has no visibility on what's happening under the covers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46495742)) "The worst part about CDK is, by far , that it's still backed by Cloudformation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46909209)) - Complex to set up and understand (4 comments): "it's simply not enough, and the resulting interfaces are still way too brittle and complex" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903276)) "CDK apps or docker compose files that are way more difficult to understand" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144793)) "it did take lot of time to to setup everything with CDK, certainly days" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868463)) - Code can add risk and imperative complexity (4 comments): "the best case is it's much better, safer, readable etc. However, the worst case is also worse." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45959275)) "there is no reason to shoot yourself in the foot with a fully fledged programming language" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820779)) "With CDK and pulumi, it's very easy to end up in a place where you lose that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45958835)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Terraform](https://hackerapproved.com/p/terraform.md): 128 recommend - [Pulumi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pulumi.md): 44 recommend - [OpenTofu](https://hackerapproved.com/p/opentofu.md): 20 recommend - [SST](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sst.md): 9 recommend - [Stelvio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stelvio.md): 8 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "AWS CDK", https://hackerapproved.com/p/aws-cdk/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).