Agree Nix is actually very simple language and it being purely functional and lazily evaluated is what makes Nix packaging so powerful, these properties are act

Agree Nix is actually very simple language and it being purely functional and lazily evaluated is what makes Nix packaging so powerful, these properties are actively utilized. I think what the problem is is not the Nix language but its stdlib - nixpkgs. It is rapidly changing (as they figure out better ways of doing things) often breaks backward compatibility (for example not long ago they removed fetchGitPrivate and the built-in is not a drop in replacement), large parts of it aren't well documented, or even not at all (people often add great features, but forget to update manual and it still gets merged). Initially this was the hardest part for me about Nix, and I guess it still is, but once I understood the structure of nixpkgs it no longer takes effort to find what I'm looking for (unfortunately many times I still have to look at the code, but now I can find it easily). The thing is that this problem wouldn't been solved with different language like scheme or even Python. The language won't help much with learning the structure of nixpkgs and the conventions used. While Nix Pills cover some parts of it, there's so much more it could talk about. BTW for those who are struggling with this. There is also very useful command to immediately find the derivation: nix edit <derivation> which should be emphasized more.