Even trying to get VS Code working with a couple of plugins (and the help of the good, experienced people on the Nix discord) was impossible (I was just using the package manager, not NixOS--apparently VS Code requires a different incantation depending on which platform you use, which is another problem.

> Sadly it would take a lot of effort to simplify everything and make it more polished.

Yes, and while it would take a lot of effort to make most things nicer (improving the language, etc), other things require effort that scales linearly with the number of packages in the universe. For example, making the package definitions in the first place, adding documentation for the packages, testing packages, etc. Other things are even worse: testing various combinations of dependencies at different versions.

> I'm afraid Nix will continue to remain very niche.

Unless it gets some serious corporate support, I'm afraid I'll agree. The Nix folks have done some impressive work, but I get the impression that they're more interested in making something cool for themselves and other like-minded people at the expense of others (and there's nothing wrong with that! it's just incompatible with growing out of a niche).