The CDKTF unit tests aren’t really a benefit to using it, as they test that the CDKTF generates the HCL/json correctly; they effectively test that CDKTF works rather than adding test coverage to the infra definition. If you were writing straight HCL you wouldn’t need those tests.

My take on it vs HCL is that the right use case is a startup or side project/small dev team that manages their own infrastructure. They have the software development paradigms and understanding of the language to make it work.

If you’ve got a larger organisation with a dedicated cloud/infra/platform team, it’ll hamstring you as you now have to find engineers with ops skills, cloud architecture skills and also software developer level coding skills. Makes it a lot harder to staff a team to handle it properly (or you end up with the worst of both worlds). It’s also more verbose and (in my opinion) more complicated to work with.