iswkq
- it has to do with DLTs like Cardano adopting Nix.
- influencers like youtubers and podcasters have began talking about it
- migration from IRC to Matrix, so people can discover it more easily
- people who are into functional programming cycles often talk about it, e.g. haskell, lisp, emacs...
- with the raise of Flatpaks and Snaps, people have been talking more often about Nix as an alternative. The same can be said about Docker/containers and is often suggested as alternative
- mainstream Linux distros taking inspiration from NixOS to make their own immutable and atomic OSs: Fedora Silverblue, openSUSE MicroOS, Clear Linux, ...
- since mid 2010s there was some push towards making documentation better for beginners. The official website also got a modern look to be more attractive. So also taking into account nixpkgs is probably good enough for the average user and has a good enough ecosystem around it as well, this all means NixOS has become mature enough for willing/passionate adopters (e.g. Arch users who want the next shiny tech), and who will talk about it in every given opportunity.
I find declarative programming like functional better for higher level programming, while Torvalds for example likes C for Linux development because it is closer to how computers work (while providing the needed abstraction than programming in assembly for example).
but i don't think the argument for it really makes any sense for OP's comment. As an user or even packager you hardly use actual functional concepts. You're mostly dealing with a JSON with some functions for declaring the system, not some crazy Haskell shit. It is just that it takes time to learn new stuff, and stuff that have concepts you're unfamiliar with takes a bit longer. And it is true that the curly braces, function arguments, and some other stuff can look kind hard to decipher, but in general it's a familiarity thing.