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Because that's fundamental to Nix. We're giving up on some current habits to get the freedom we want. This won't ever change, but people might. I'm not blamin

Because that's fundamental to Nix. We're giving up on some current habits to get the freedom we want. This won't ever change, but people might. I'm not blaming them, I feel their pain. This is common in technology all around, think about driving a car for 25 years with manual transmission and then trying automatic transmission.

zzzcpan 10y ago
While some things are fundamental for Nix's architecture, user interfaces are not. You don't even have to force people to learn the language, you can get apt-getish experience for generating .nix files with git-like commits or whatever. There are no limits in making it user-friendly and respecting people's habits and familiarity (which is actually a core concept for interfaces, that you seem to confuse with new technology).
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  Faking destructive package management on top does exist, and we do plan on making it better, but it's lot harder to get right than you might think.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    I have some UI ideas of my own and could've helped, but I don't think investing time into Nix would be smart at this point. I feel like Nix lacks a clear vision of its future, focuses on desktop systems, while package management is not a big problem there, but it is on servers, and yet apart from Linux no other server systems are officially supported. No FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD.
    - Ericson2314 10y ago
      Overall, I don't think the situation is as dire as you say it is, but I do understand why you think these things. > I feel like Nix lacks a clear vision of its future. There's various high-level plans that I think have a decent consensus, but not enough people have authority to make things happen. This means that more interesting PRs often rot. > focuses on desktop systems Nobody actually prioritizes desktops over servers, and the core design is quite agnostic, but because Nix is over a decade old, lots of old code and documentation do make it seem this way. > yet apart from Linux no other server systems are officially supported Other unices work do for userland Nix, and darwin has official binaries which would be the moral equivalent of official support. Also check out https://github.com/triton/triton https://github.com/triton/triton a fork of nixpkgs which aims to have a NixOS work with FreeBSD kernel, and https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os to better make immutable OS images.
    - iElectric2 10y ago
      This statement is completely wrong and ignorant. Please don't say things if you don't know about them. Just to prove my point, we've recently merged a branch for hardened compiler flags. This is mainly for server security. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/12895 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/12895
  - mst 10y ago
    Write a horrible hacky script that emulates 'npm install --save', see what users do with it?
- iElectric2 10y ago
  And that's exactly when shit hits the fan. Now they expect everything will work out with commands managing a language. At one point, sooner or later, you have to tell them they just need to learn the language. I'd rather spend time explaining the language than teaching them workarounds. Having said this, we already do have ways to dodge the language for example using imperative package management. But that's exactly how another such blog post could be written how it doesn't always work due to "freedom" that Nix tries to provide. Lesson learned here is: pick your fights carefully.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    > I'd rather spend time explaining the language than teaching them workarounds. Good user interface is not a workaround. I don't think you understand the magnitude of the problem though. By not caring about user experience and forcing people to learn the language you are limiting your target audience to a fraction of professional programmers and pretty much closing the door to everyone else. This will not get Nix anywhere, really. Don't get me wrong, I think what Nix brings us is great and pretty much the only future for package management, but it's very obvious that it's not going to be the Nix itself.

zzzcpan 10y ago

While some things are fundamental for Nix's architecture, user interfaces are not. You don't even have to force people to learn the language, you can get apt-getish experience for generating .nix files with git-like commits or whatever. There are no limits in making it user-friendly and respecting people's habits and familiarity (which is actually a core concept for interfaces, that you seem to confuse with new technology).

Ericson2314 10y ago
Faking destructive package management on top does exist, and we do plan on making it better, but it's lot harder to get right than you might think.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  I have some UI ideas of my own and could've helped, but I don't think investing time into Nix would be smart at this point. I feel like Nix lacks a clear vision of its future, focuses on desktop systems, while package management is not a big problem there, but it is on servers, and yet apart from Linux no other server systems are officially supported. No FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD.
  - Ericson2314 10y ago
    Overall, I don't think the situation is as dire as you say it is, but I do understand why you think these things. > I feel like Nix lacks a clear vision of its future. There's various high-level plans that I think have a decent consensus, but not enough people have authority to make things happen. This means that more interesting PRs often rot. > focuses on desktop systems Nobody actually prioritizes desktops over servers, and the core design is quite agnostic, but because Nix is over a decade old, lots of old code and documentation do make it seem this way. > yet apart from Linux no other server systems are officially supported Other unices work do for userland Nix, and darwin has official binaries which would be the moral equivalent of official support. Also check out https://github.com/triton/triton https://github.com/triton/triton a fork of nixpkgs which aims to have a NixOS work with FreeBSD kernel, and https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os to better make immutable OS images.
  - iElectric2 10y ago
    This statement is completely wrong and ignorant. Please don't say things if you don't know about them. Just to prove my point, we've recently merged a branch for hardened compiler flags. This is mainly for server security. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/12895 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/12895
- mst 10y ago
  Write a horrible hacky script that emulates 'npm install --save', see what users do with it?
iElectric2 10y ago
And that's exactly when shit hits the fan. Now they expect everything will work out with commands managing a language. At one point, sooner or later, you have to tell them they just need to learn the language. I'd rather spend time explaining the language than teaching them workarounds. Having said this, we already do have ways to dodge the language for example using imperative package management. But that's exactly how another such blog post could be written how it doesn't always work due to "freedom" that Nix tries to provide. Lesson learned here is: pick your fights carefully.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  > I'd rather spend time explaining the language than teaching them workarounds. Good user interface is not a workaround. I don't think you understand the magnitude of the problem though. By not caring about user experience and forcing people to learn the language you are limiting your target audience to a fraction of professional programmers and pretty much closing the door to everyone else. This will not get Nix anywhere, really. Don't get me wrong, I think what Nix brings us is great and pretty much the only future for package management, but it's very obvious that it's not going to be the Nix itself.