Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a great idea. But are you practicing it? If you are comitting hundreds (or thousands) of lines of boilerplate across hundreds (or thousands!) of files to a git repository, you are not practicing IaC. Writing software is a craft. “Code” is more than just text files that are stored in a VCS. “Code” is a way of thinking. “Code” is a mindset. It requires appropriate abstractions and minimal redundancy. Every piece of information has a single source of truth, and every line of code should have a meaningful purpose. There are many mantras and guidelines but most boil down to an emphasis on readability, elegance, and simplicity. If your IaC is not readable, simple, and elegant, then it’s not “code”. If it’s not code, then it cannot be “infrastructure as code”. It is merely configuration in git.

Look at your templates, and ask yourself if you are practicing “infrastructure as code” or if you merely have “configuration in git”. If you have the latter (and 95% of you do, but I’m only giving the 5% because I am an incurable optimist and I believe someone out there must be doing things properly), what do you need to do to change it?