I like what I understand to be the core ideas of NixOS to be, but i have to say: There might be a chance that some century, people both in the industry and outside understand that new syntax, or languages, are rarely necessary, or even beneficial.

Use different semantics if you must, but please use some existing syntax for your DSL.

I'm so tired of learning a pointless new variety of almost the same thing, only with slightly different syntax, maybe some awkward string quoting, and some rather pointless syntactic sugar.

I'm not saying NixOS is the worst offender, but innovating in (mostly) superficial syntax, or using obscure syntax is almost certainly not well spent time except for a few very narrow niches/contexts. Especially not for prospective users.

I get it, it's fun inventing both languages and tools, I love doing it myself!

However, and in general: Don't invent a language when you need a tool, and vice versa.