Terraform prints out the number of resources changed and at least requires a "yes" to proceed. Not quite as onerous as described but at least prevents some type of fat-fingering. Basically all changes with Terraform are risky as they usually involved bringing up and down infrastructure.
Terraform will perform the following actions:
# google_compute_instance.vm_instance will be created
+ resource "google_compute_instance" "vm_instance" {
+ ... <more>
Plan: 2 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.
Do you want to perform these actions?
Terraform will perform the actions described above.
Only 'yes' will be accepted to approve.
Enter a value: yes
This is exactly the problem the author is referring to. With Terraform, you always type "yes" to proceed, so it turns into muscle memory. You stop reading the output, and you're already typing "yes" before you even see the prompt. Terraform's output is also verbose, and many changes show up as "1 to add, 0 to change, 1 to destroy" because they don't separately list a "replace" category. It's pretty bad; you've got cognitive overload, confusing output summary, and a predetermined continue answer. And this is often an action you're performing under duress. I've been bitten by it plenty of times.
