The author says the learning curve is steep but it pays off at the end. Somehow I don't really see that claim well supported.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the idea of managing my system declarative (aconfmgr gets me somewhat there). I replicate my system on an external SSD for on the go for example.
I hate a messy home but resigned myself to it. I come from a functional background, so the learning curve should be less steep for me.
But overall it always seems the amount of work and time for the result is not a reasonable tradeoff. Tried Nix as a package manager a few times, always stopped when simple things took immense amount of time (Emacs with broken fonts?). Have colleagues running NixOS, never heard an argument for it that wasn't half a straw man. Yeah other systems break and it sucks but fixing that takes less time than figuring out how to write your own packages in Nix.
Adding to that that I run around and install every second neat thing I see on HN, I struggle to see Nix as more than a Rubik's cube.
But overall it always seems the amount of work and time for the result is not a reasonable tradeoff. Tried Nix as a package manager a few times, always stopped when simple things took immense amount of time (Emacs with broken fonts?). Have colleagues running NixOS, never heard an argument for it that wasn't half a straw man. Yeah other systems break and it sucks but fixing that takes less time than figuring out how to write your own packages in Nix. Adding to that that I run around and install every second neat thing I see on HN, I struggle to see Nix as more than a Rubik's cube.
What am I missing?