There's pyinfra (https://github.com/Fizzadar/pyinfra) if you like Python (disclaimer: I started the project), heavily inspired by Ansible just without the yaml/jinja2 hybrid stuff.

I've been following pyinfra precisely because every new Ansible release makes my heart sink knowing how much work it's going to cause me and how inscrutable debugging our playbooks is every time. I've been trying to find the time to port over all our existing Ansible playbooks but have really only scratched the surface so far. However, I have high hopes, pyinfra looks like a well thought through project.

Join the club of staying on Ansible 2.9 forever! It’s 2015 MacBook level good and still being developed. 2.9.21 was released two weeks ago and 2.9.22 is coming soon.

The way Ansible is developed it’s way easier to fork your own and backport bug fixes and features you need because it’s a toss up whether the fix you need actually got merged or whether it languishes in the GH issues.

i haven't even explored the options for shifting to another ansible-like system, i've just gone back to the supposed "bad old days" of a collection of random tools with shell scripts to fill in the gaps.

a combination of docker containers and terraform (for managing aws) is doing most of the heavy lifting for me.