Flex your knowledge of templates with Bicep

For those in the IT field who have been following my insights, you're likely aware of my extensive work with templates, particularly my focus on staying current with developments in Microsoft Azure templates. A crucial recommendation for fellow IT professionals working with templates is to explore Bicep templates and parameter files. Bicep serves as an evolved version of ARM templates and shares similarities with Terraform by being a domain-specific language conducive to modular template creation. This evolution significantly simplifies the template creation process.

Bicep's standout feature, compared to traditional ARM templates, is its modular design. With ARM templates, incorporating child templates necessitates embedding the URL directly within your code. Bicep eliminates this cumbersome requirement by allowing child templates to be incorporated as modules, facilitating their automatic inclusion without the need for manual local storage or uploading to shared locations. This modular approach not only enhances security by reducing hard-coded information—which can be challenging to maintain and update—but also mitigates human error.