Infrastructure as Code (IaC) lies at the heart of modern DevOps and platform engineering, but choosing between declarative and imperative approaches is often more complex than it seems. In this session, I’ll share my five-year journey navigating both paradigms, from reinventing the wheel with the open-source version of Pulumi to embracing Terraform and its wrappers, such as Terragrunt and Python integrations.

Through these experiences, I uncovered a critical but often overlooked aspect of IaC: how declarative and imperative styles influence CI/CD workflows. What started as running Terraform locally evolved into building full-fledged applications (in Go and Python) to manage infrastructure dynamically.

This talk dives into the hurdles, lessons learned, and practical insights that I’ve gained as a DevOps consultant working daily with cloud-native technologies. Whether you’re debating which approach to use or looking to refine your existing workflows, this session offers a behind-the-scenes perspective on making informed decisions and navigating the nuances of IaC effectively.

I will be using practical examples emphasizing the TCO of running a declarative vs imperative approach which is something I am also blogging about on medium.