Couldn't disagree more.

I have written both TF and then CDKTF extensively (!), and I am absolutely never going back to raw TF. TF vs CDKTF isn't declarative vs imperative, it's "anemic untyped slow feedback mess" vs "strong typesystem, expressive builtins and LSP". You can build things in CDKTF that are humanly intractable in raw TF and it requires far less discipline, not more, to keep it from becoming an unmaintainable mess. Having a typechecker for your providers is a "cannot unsee" experience. As is being able to use for loops and defining functions.

That being said, would I have preferred a CDKTF in Haskell, or a typed Nix dialect? Hell yes. CDKTF was awful, it was just the least bad thing around. Just like TF itself, in a way.

But I have little problems with HCL as a compilation target. Rich ecosystem and the abstractions seem sensible. Maybe that's Stockholm syndrome? Ironically, CDKTF has made me stop hating TF :)

Now that Hashicorp put the kibosh on CDKTF though, the question is: where next...