Ha, nice!

Seriously though, javascript is not a great language if you are looking for robust determinism. I can understand their decision to go elsewhere, given the domain and design.

People have tried: https://github.com/jkcfg/jk

But yeah I agree. The thing is, if all you need is robust determinism why do you need a full functional language with currying and other complex concepts?

Google had the same problem for Bazel, and their solution (Starlark) is way easier to understand.

> The thing is, if all you need is robust determinism why do you need a full functional language with currying and other complex concepts?

Yeah, that's a good point.

I don't see any reason determinism requires a functional paradigm. That said, the functional language communities probably value determinism more than the others, currently.

Choosing a language whose community values align with your needs can be a good thing.

JavaScript also includes bad footgun-features like procedures, aka functions with effects. Neither Nix nor JSON have this feature, making Nix in this aspect closer to JSON than JavaScript is.