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Comment by rmvt | Hacker News Reader

maybe it's because i'm not in the devops space but i'm 4 paragraphs in and i still don't know what this is about?

You're not alone. I am in the devops space, and about half way through I was thinking "ok, I get you're excited about this thing, but what is it?"

It looks like it is in the same space as terraform, but uses a gui instead of defining your infrastructure as code, but allows you to "simulate" and review changes before actually applying them.

Perhaps https://systeminit.com would make more sense. :)

Not to me. It says "System Initiative is an Intuitive, Powerful, and Collaborative replacement for Infrastructure as Code" but I still don't understand what it does or why I would want to use it.

They get to it if you scroll! I came to the comments with the exact same concern, but they eventually spell out the value-add in (IMO) very clear terms:

  First, we turned everything into data - a rich system of digital twins that enable safe, easy simluation of changes, and map 1:1 to the upstream resource.

  Second, we made it all programmable and reactive by modeling it on top of a hypergraph of functions. When one property on a model changes, anything dependent on that property automatically re-calculates.

  Third, we built a multiplayer user interface that makes working with the model fast, safe, and fun.

Seems cool, though I'm far from needing it. AFAIU: it's an attempt to build a reactive infrastructure system from the ground up using a cute Functional Programming paradigm, not just building off of code-like YAML files like we do today.

Personally the GUI gives me flashbacks to the dark days where "programming" in my mind was "using Eclipse", but that's a biased take! I can see why WYSIWYG-style functionality was considered too fundamental to make optional.

The trick is that we’re not replacing programming with the UI - we’re just making it easier to compose things together. Plenty of code in SI - just not the way you write IaC today.

Can that code be versioned in git?

Or is it just a blob in the database for SI?

I read through the blog post and entry page twice each - yeah still confused. The pitch reads like an engineer celebrating their implementation.

What I took away is: it’s a collaborative IDE for infrastructure? with some nifty simulators to catch issues earlier, and “somehow” changes are managed outside the popular git+pipelines workflows?

There are elements of this that I like (faster validations that CDK deployments ). Those aspects are bundled with confusing, either unnecessary or poorly communicated, other elements. “Replacement for IaC” - is there a new paradigm? Or is IaC just now a graph in this local application? Because you tout being able to program new service models, so the code isn’t gone…

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