> To be fair, Nix language is completely different from other languages out there -- it employs only immutable data structures -- so using another language would not be possible.

I don't think the immutability is actually important. Only derivations (which are basically language agnostic) need to be immutable/hashable.

> It does not excuse Nix to have such a braindamaged^W esoteric syntax.

What's so bad about it? The main pain point I've found with it is the lack of documentation for builtin functions. The syntax seems fine to me.