Yeah, you are right. It is not exactly YAML's fault but how it is used. I am ok with using it with ansible/salt/compose. But k8s is stretching it to it's limits and makes it cumbersome to use.

And yeah, there is not much examples of HCL files for different software, but most of the time there is not much to adapt. Usually when i need to run something, i just take some random HCL file i have and substitute the docker image, edit the amount of resources and add storage and config via templates. And done. It might be confusing/intimidating at first, but like with anything after some time you should be ok.