Terraform CDK
Shares rank 8 of 10 IaC tools by recommenders
People recommend it for provisioning infrastructure in a real programming language while keeping Terraform's plan and apply workflow; the main caveat is that HashiCorp has deprecated and archived it.
People recommend it for provisioning infrastructure in a real programming language while keeping Terraform's plan and apply workflow; the main caveat is that HashiCorp has deprecated and archived it.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 41%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Write infrastructure in a real language
“The value of CDK was always that it allowed you to write in a fully orthogonal language”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “You might as well get to use a real programming language.”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” Dynamic provisioning with declarative output
“The real value of cdktf was more dynamic infrastructure provisioning while still having the plan / apply pattern.”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “it just makes it easier to materialize that declarative output”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Deprecated and archived by HashiCorp
“As far as corporate mercy killings goes archived under mozilla license is better than a pivot”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “It's also deprecated by Hashicorp now.”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS”
Other IaC tools people recommend
The four most recommended other IaC tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 10 IaC tools, rankedWhat people said
15 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Instead of Pulumi, I originally used Terraform CDK with Python before CDK got IBM'd.”
“It's also deprecated by Hashicorp now.”
“It has made development more unified and have less redundancy and manual work.”
“The value of CDK was always that it allowed you to write in a fully orthogonal language”
“As far as corporate mercy killings goes archived under mozilla license is better than a pivot”
“You might as well get to use a real programming language.”
“it just makes it easier to materialize that declarative output”
“The real value of cdktf was more dynamic infrastructure provisioning while still having the plan / apply pattern.”
“I don't agree with the value proposition”
“That seems like rather short notice.”
“looked at tfcdk a while back but didn't think it was a good idea (glad)”
“Downsides are doing infrastructure in a programming language was always problematic”
“The design of the CDKs was atrocious.”
“Terraform supports AWS anyway.”
“I feel sorry for those teams who have migrated to TF CDK.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.