Re:Nix and NixOS, my pain points
by masklinn on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:40AM
(#34135862)
> But the official nix project has excellent documentation.
If it does, it's really well hidden. Because the nix manual certainly is not that.
> I think the problem is that nix is just hard to learn.
No, the problem is that nix offers no guidance or real help along that path. You go to https://nixos.org/learn.html and you've got essentially nothing helpful beyond the installation (which is easy enough). And it gets really bad when you get there from https://nixos.org/explore.html with no prior knowledge.
> Though Haskell folks eat it right up... no surprise there.
They're used to having to power through absent documentation?
If it does, it's really well hidden. Because the nix manual certainly is not that.
> I think the problem is that nix is just hard to learn.
No, the problem is that nix offers no guidance or real help along that path. You go to https://nixos.org/learn.html and you've got essentially nothing helpful beyond the installation (which is easy enough). And it gets really bad when you get there from https://nixos.org/explore.html with no prior knowledge.
> Though Haskell folks eat it right up... no surprise there.
They're used to having to power through absent documentation?