Speaking of vim vs emacs, how does the nix command line interface compare to GNU Guix?
Guix greatly simplifies things. Like others said for Nix, I really would recommend managing things declaratively in your system config and a manifest file, but the basic cli isn't bad.
guix install ranger
guix remove ranger
guix pull
guix upgrade
guix search ranger
These basics just work how you'd expect last I checked. There is some `guix shell` stuff as well, but I don't use it, so won't be able to say much about it.
See the refcard for an overview on the Guix CLI: https://guix.gnu.org/guix-refcard.pdf
But I'd draw an analogy to vim or emacs. These have steep difficulty curves to them, but provide a power-user experience. Roughly, Nix is to apt-get what vim is to notepad. -- It'd be weird to try vim but live in insert mode the whole time.
It's not a matter of "no-the-ux-doesn't-suck", but more "if you can get past the rough edges, the things which Nix allows are wonderful".