Salt dev here. :]<p>Salt does not force you into YAML/Jinja2. It has a pluggable rendering system that includes out-of-the-box support for thin DSLs, like PyDSL and PyObjects. It's also straightforward to add additional renderers if you like:\<p><a href="https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/ref/renderers/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/ref/renderers/index.htm...</a>
"(I also want to note that for your sake, if you cannot read/write ruby at the level of writing a cookbook than you should really question yourself as an administrator.)"<p>Ruby is quite complex language. I would say more complex than Python and should not be considered standard. When you use Chef/Puppet it is obviously required but absolutely unnecessary when you have a different setup.<p>Or perhaps you should not call yourself and administrator if you do not know all the traits of UNIX OS-es.<p>CFengine "lost" the battle even when it's the fastest one with the smallest performance footprint.