On the other hand you've got 'stdenv' all over the place in the Nix example, e.g. stdenv.lib.licenses.bsd3 vs license:bsd3. Also stdenv.mkDerivation is kind

On the other hand you've got 'stdenv' all over the place in the Nix example, e.g. stdenv.lib.licenses.bsd3 vs license:bsd3. Also stdenv.mkDerivation is kind of an eyesore compared to define-public / package. One is nicer than the other in a few different minor ways, but overall I think it's basically a wash. I'd not consider verbosity a factor if choosing between the two. >(There's an indentation error in either your example or my browser that makes that input clause appear to belong to the origin clause rather than the package clause, btw. Sorry about that, I botched the indentation when I pasted that into my scratch buffer, which had unbalanced parens in it. That's on me.