Unless you start messing with Operators (which are hot right now) for desired state configuration within your cluster, which can, theoretically, be written in anything, but realistically tend to be written in Golang.
I think operators are great and true to the k8s spirit. You describe your desired state (e.g. a postgres database) according to a CRD. And the operator will make your yaml definition become reality. I think the declarative approach is a big improvement over the imperative step-by-step setup. I rather like to describe how I would like things to be, instead of having to create the desired state myself.
To be clear: I like operators! I was just responding to the parent post; JSON/YAML aren’t the only ways to express things in the Kubeverse.
May be. But operators are a relative pain to develop. I prefer the HCL approach. You can have modules instead of operators, and while HCL overall might be painful, it's less painful, IMO, than constantly changing operators. My team spends a significant amount of time chasing deprecations of operators and associated helm charts.