I had a similar feeling for the language and I can assure you you do get used to it, and that it's probably not the syntax that's making it difficult but unders

I had a similar feeling for the language and I can assure you you do get used to it, and that it's probably not the syntax that's making it difficult but understanding the programming model. As for not being machine-editable, the nix language has a module system and it's easy to format a file with something that's whatever shape you want and have that machine-editable. Or use any other format and fromJSON etc. functions.