Having done some IAC myself, I’m struggling to see how this would work for anything but the simplest architecture.
It’s like all the visual programming languages that become unusable as soon as the program achieves a bit of complexity.
Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you suggest instead :) ?
Be transparent and just say: $8000/year for enterpise license for 8 seats. Additional seats at $700/year/seat.
I feel the same way about advertised prices like $99.95 or for gas, even $1.99 9/10.
But it persists because it works. I suspect call for pricing works as well. Especially for enterprise, and they are who you are usually targeting with that kind of prices.
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#33Having done some IAC myself, I’m struggling to see how this would work for anything but the simplest architecture. It’s like all the visual programming languages that become unusable as soon as the program achieves a bit of complexity.
Hi SWE @ Brainboard here,
Indeed, managing complexity is one of the most difficult part of making a graphical tools useful, and some architectures cannot inherently be represented only by a simple 2d graphic.
On the flip side, IAC can sometime be complicated to reason about without deep-diving in the source code and having deep knowledge about Terraform and every cloud provider.
We believe that there is a middle ground, where Brainboard helps engineers design and communicate about their architecture efficiently, are able to manually edit the generated Terraform files, while avoiding the churn of constantly redrawing their documentation graphics.
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#34Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#35Having done some IAC myself, I’m struggling to see how this would work for anything but the simplest architecture. It’s like all the visual programming languages that become unusable as soon as the program achieves a bit of complexity.
The best answer is really to try it out. Let's do it and see if it works or not. By the way we are implementing complex architectures (that will be available in the marketplace) and it just works as expected.
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be transparent and just say: $8000/year for enterpise license for 8 seats. Additional seats at $700/year/seat.
I feel kind of frustration about the pricing, what price makes sense to you?
I guess for people who aren't sure yet if they need/want what you offer, prizing (at least in a magnitude) is part of the decision whether they should invest more time researching.
So either:
- put a ballpark prize on it (even something vague like "from X$ to Y$ depending on application, talk to sales" would work
- if that isn't what you want, you need to make extra sure that people want your product so hard they are willing to jump through your hoops. For that to be true they have to be sure the thing you offer solves problems worth solving in a way they want it to be solved.
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel kind of frustration about the pricing, what price makes sense to you?
I guess for people who aren't sure yet if they need/want what you offer, prizing (at least in a magnitude) is part of the decision whether they should invest more time researching. So either: - put a ballpark prize on it (even something vague like "from X$ to Y$ depending on application, talk to sales" would work - if that isn't what you want, you need to make extra sure that people want your product so hard they are…
Thanks a lot for the suggestion.
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#38[deleted]
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#39This looks interesting. But as a developer I really would like my pull requests, linters and what not.
This feels like the G-Programming language from LabView which allows you to graphically program your physics experiments. But once you drink the programming language coolaid you don’t want to do graphics programming any more.
So I guess I am already biased towards reading text. But for me this is still the best way to consume information compared to pictures or videos
Re: Draw.io and Terraform = Brainboard, Graphical Way to Do Terraform
#40All for trying to reduce env drift and divergence between things, but don’t think the documentation as the source of truth is the winning formula. Source of truth will inevitably be code (bc it has to capture the full weight of the complexity of your system), IaC is hard enough already with the dizzy height of the abstractions you are building on top of, having a system that adds another doesn’t seem like a winning formula to me.
All for better visualizations of terraform resources tho