> The nix language is also really unpalatable to me.
It may not really help the case, but I firmly believe that it is not the language, but the ecosystem, and is more of a fundamental issue. But maybe putting the blame elsewhere could help accept the situation.
So anyways, the language is pretty much a lazily evaluated JSON. But even if it were something else (insert your favourite language), the problem ultimately is that packaging software is complex especially in a non-standard way, with endless edge cases, requires whole libraries and conventions and this is simply not a well-trodden path. Most programs simply hard-code "traditional" Linux file system conventions and those have to be patched in some way.
So the hard thing is not "is this really a function application here", when writing new Nix code the hard thing is simply knowing that for python there already exist this abstraction in nixpkgs, but to use it you need this folder structure and this build tool, etc. Especially when there are multiple abstractions for the same thing because it's an absolutely huge repository with countless packages.
But the benefits absolutely make up for it big time - there is simply no going back from Nix imo. I would honestly feel constantly "dirty" with any other traditional package manager, it's like file "versioning" before version control.
(PS: just grep for use cases of a function you are looking for. Also, find a "blueprint" package and start from there, e.g. another program written in python with a few native deps)
I've used Nix for at least seven years, and I firmly believe that the language is a large part of the problem. Yes, the Nix language is "just another lazily-evaluated pure FP language in the ML tradition" and "it's like a lazily-evaluated JSON", but it has several large footguns. The biggest one is that spaces are use to separate elements in list literals as well as for function application. The second is the lack of a usable type system, in the sense that the programmer cannot assert the types of values in a useful way. Instead, you have to rely on comments and convention to know what a function's arguments are.
These two design warts also interact with each other really badly: If you try to put a function application into a list and forget to enclose it in parentheses, you instead insert the function as one element in the list and its arguments as successive elements. The usual result is "expected an X but got a function" error in some completely unrelated part of the code.
It is the language. The module system is both semantically indispensable and a second class citizen. It's another language, implemented on top of Nix. Once you have a userland "if" reimplemented in your language you know you're in a bad place. (`mkIf`)
Maybe lazy evaluated attrsets can help make a dent, but still the lack of static types for module code is beyond painful. It's hostile.
I believe Nix is worth it in spite of this, and I'll advise anyone to learn it, it truly is the way forward, but by god do I hope it's not the last step on this journey. Please, Lord, please don't let nixlang be the final iteration XD
It may not really help the case, but I firmly believe that it is not the language, but the ecosystem, and is more of a fundamental issue. But maybe putting the blame elsewhere could help accept the situation.
So anyways, the language is pretty much a lazily evaluated JSON. But even if it were something else (insert your favourite language), the problem ultimately is that packaging software is complex especially in a non-standard way, with endless edge cases, requires whole libraries and conventions and this is simply not a well-trodden path. Most programs simply hard-code "traditional" Linux file system conventions and those have to be patched in some way.
So the hard thing is not "is this really a function application here", when writing new Nix code the hard thing is simply knowing that for python there already exist this abstraction in nixpkgs, but to use it you need this folder structure and this build tool, etc. Especially when there are multiple abstractions for the same thing because it's an absolutely huge repository with countless packages.
But the benefits absolutely make up for it big time - there is simply no going back from Nix imo. I would honestly feel constantly "dirty" with any other traditional package manager, it's like file "versioning" before version control.
(PS: just grep for use cases of a function you are looking for. Also, find a "blueprint" package and start from there, e.g. another program written in python with a few native deps)