I don’t frequent that world much these days, but I personally preferred the agent/pull model when I did. I can’t really articulate why, I think I feel comfortable knowing that the agent will run with the last known config on the machine, potentially correcting any misconfiguration even if the central host is down.
The big debate back in the day was Puppet vs. Chef (before Ansible/SaltStack). Puppet was more declarative, Chef more imperative.
I also admit, I don’t like YAML, other than for simple, mostly flat config and serializing.
I further admit that Ansible just has a bigger community these days, and that’s worth something. When I need to do a bit of CM these days, I use Ansible.
There isn’t just one christian god. Who the christan god is depends on which accounts you consider.
It’s easy to read the old testament, read the post-gospel books, listen to the 2000 years of doctrine, and come away with the opinion that the christian god is evil. If you just read the gospels though, and accept that part of the message is: “I’m throwing out the old deal, the new one is Love One Another,” it’s harder to maintain that argument.
I was raised Lutheran, and am currently a philosophical agnostic. I know people who have an internally consistent belief in a good and loving christian god based on how they interpret the entire body of work (they’re well studied). I also believe their definitions of “good” and “loving” would align with yours.
New thought just now:
Sorry for the long reply. You got me to extend my thinking and that came out in the comment.