To be honest, I think this comes down to simple viewpoint: Chef seems more of an imperative, programmatic solution, the usage of ruby as the language instantly makes me hope somebody ported it to python, as is the way of the world with all of ruby’s ideas.
That’s not what you want for this sort of thing though. You want to speak to the void where the system will be and declare:
“Upon port 80 summon from the north the daemon named nginx. His task is to serve.”
“A user should exist, his name should be chiggsy and he should be one of the mighty in the group of wheel,”
“Raise up a wall of fire, thin in the places 80,443,8080”
And so on, although perhaps in language less flowery.
Puppet supports that paradigm better IMO. I’d have used either one, I had no preference but when it came down to it, declarative suited me better.
Puppet.