infrastructure as code
The practice of managing and provisioning computing infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files rather than manual processes or interactive tools. IaC tools like Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CloudFormation let teams treat infrastructure with the same version control, code review, and automated testing practices applied to application code. Changes are tracked, reproducible, and auditable.
When you'd see it: Platform engineering team practices, cloud cost management, compliance audits, disaster recovery.
Why it matters: Manual infrastructure is inconsistent, slow, and hard to audit. IaC makes environments reproducible (preventing the 'works in staging, breaks in production' failure mode) and makes compliance provable through version history.
Common mistakes: Treating IaC as a documentation exercise for existing infrastructure rather than the source of truth. If someone can still make changes through the cloud console that bypass IaC, the benefits are undermined.
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