Advantages of Templates ( ie infrastructure as code) over API calls

Question

I am trying to setup a module to deploy resources in the cloud (it could be any cloud provider). I don't see the advantages of using templates (ie. the deploy manager) over direct API calls :

Creation of VM using a template :

# deployment.yaml
resources:
- type: compute.v1.instance
  name: quickstart-deployment-vm
  properties:
    zone: us-central1-f
    machineType: f1-micro
 ...

# bash command to deploy yaml file
gcloud deployment-manager deployments create vm-deploy --config deployment.yaml

Creation of VM using a API call :

def addInstance(http, listOfHeaders):
  url = "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/[PROJECT_ID]/zones/[ZONE]/instances"

  body = {
    "name": "quickstart-deployment-vm",
    "zone": " us-central1-f",
    "machineType": "f1-micro",
...
     }]

bodyContentURLEncoded = urllib.urlencode(bodyContent)
http.request(uri=url, method="POST", body=body)

Can someone explain to me what benefits I get using templates?

Answer 1

readability\easy of use\authentication handled for you\no need to be a coder\etc. There can be many advantages, it really depends on how you look at it. It depends on your background\tools you use.

It might be more beneficial to use python all the way for you specifically.