Terraform code is written in the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) in files with the extension .tf. It is a declarative language, so your goal is to describe the infrastructure you want, and Terraform will figure out how to create it. Terraform can create infrastructure across a wide variety of platforms, or what it calls providers, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and many others.

You can write Terraform code in just about any text editor. If you search around, you can find Terraform syntax highlighting support for most editors (note that you may have to search for the word HCL instead of Terraform), including vim, emacs, Sublime Text, Atom, Visual Studio Code, and IntelliJ (the latter even has support for refactoring, find usages, and go to declaration).

The first step to using Terraform is typically to configure the provider(s) you want to use. Create an empty folder and put a file in it called main.tf that contains the following contents: