Honestly, thats the main revelation I had when going through that playlist. Basically Nix is just attribute sets (which is sort of just a JSON object). The entire thing. Nix files are just some preamble and then they return an attribute set at the end. Understanding that will get you 90% of the way there in terms of understanding the syntax and being able to cut through the "weirdness".
At that point its about understanding actual concepts like overlays, derivations, etc but its much easier now that you understand the attrset concept.
I do realize it's a work of passion done by numerous volunteers, to whom I feel gratitude, but at this point, why can't this be adequately defined, in a written form, in a way that is understandable? To me, the concept of a series of projections of declarative configuration statements onto a final state is not hard to understand in itself; yet, I am somewhat struggling to create and maintain such a configuration without feeling that I am just copypasting bits and pieces from random people.
I guess I just have to bite the apple and spend a few days watching YouTube to see if I reach enlightenment - at this point, I barely understand the function names.
It seems like the community is just a bunch of people who have had that lightbulb go on already, so its hard to go back and view things without the lightbulb on.
I do thank you for the pointer, and I think I've come across these videos before, _but_ to me, video is probably the last format I can assimilate this type of information. Usually, in my experience, well designed systems have a way of making sense so that documentation and understanding flows naturally from base abstractions, and this is something I miss in nix. I would like to try guix to see whether that makes more sense to me, but I am hesitant given that nix seems to have so much more of the mindshare.
One day I'll try to give the video tutorials a chance, maybe it will clear things up. Thanks again and thanks to mr Libbey as well.