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I also have the feeling that the tutorials start with the details, instead of starting with an overview so you can understand what is what. When you are trying

I also have the feeling that the tutorials start with the details, instead of starting with an overview so you can understand what is what. When you are trying to be as different from everything else as wide-reachingly as Nix is, it seems to work better to build an understanding up rather than down. This seems to frustrate a lot of people because it does not give much payoff for the first few hours of learning (and that's a lot to invest to even understand what something is). The truth is that Nix is really really complicated (expect a year-long learning curve to truly "get" everything), but it's also really hard to take the more-standard approaches to building packages and managing machines seriously once all the pieces finally do all connect. Unfortunately, it kind of makes one feel like being an early adopter of git in a world where no one else uses version control. It's like, "Yes, this is way better, but I'm not going to be able to get anyone else to use it."

nvarsj 6y ago
This is well described. Nix is fundamentally a different way to manage an OS compared to almost anything out there. While I think the ideas behind it are revolutionary and is the right way to build infra, the UX and organic growth of it makes it fairly difficult to get into - so there is unfortunately a steep learning curve. I think I sunk a solid 40 hours into building a declarative config for my own dev machine before I had a decent (but far from complete) understanding. But once you grasp it, it is quite mind blowing, and you wonder how anyone could cope with traditional mutable systems and the associated temperamental config management. I think Guix might be the answer as a more approachable implementation of the Nix ideas, using Scheme for its config language. I haven't spent much time with it but I got going a lot quicker initially compared to Nix.
- takeda 6y ago
  > I think Guix might be the answer as a more approachable implementation of the Nix ideas, using Scheme for its config language. I haven't spent much time with it but I got going a lot quicker initially compared to Nix. Out of curiosity, did you tried Guix before trying Nix or vice versa? When looking at Guix myself, all I see is that the derivations are just wrapped in parentheses otherwise they do look similar. So I'm wondering if scheme actually brings anything here, especially for someone not familiar with a functional language. IMO Nix language isn't actually that hard, I believe the most complexity comes from nixpkgs and still not adequate documentation of it, so one needs to study its source code.
  - nvarsj 6y ago
    I’m probably biased in that I primarily use Emacs and like lisps. So I find guix more approachable right out the box. Learning a new language just to use an OS is quite a big ask and part of the learning hurdle of Nix. It’s too bad that guix uses old style mailing lists for development though. I just can’t be bothered setting up myself for that mode of contribution, so I’ll continue to use NixOS for the indefinite future.
rgoulter 6y ago
> Unfortunately, it kind of makes one feel like being an early adopter of git in a world where no one else uses version control. This is a fantastic analogy. I think it's also worth noting that git's UX is notoriously bad for newcomers. These days I'm pretty comfortable with digging myself out of any hole I might mistakenly get into with git. But when I first started using it, all I could do was trivial uses of add/commit/push/pull/merge. I think the equivalent of "trivial uses of the basics" in Nix would be a "for this use case: just do it this way. You'll understand why later".
carlmr 6y ago
>it seems to work better to build an understanding up rather than down. I think especially because it's so different you should start with broad concepts and examples, so that the learner can create a broad mental model where they can fill in the details. Otherwise if you hit them with a barrage of details they won't remember any of them later on, because they don't fit anywhere into a broader concept and are disorganized. Give a few examples that do something useful, show what they're doing differently than other package managers, then break down these examples into the details.
outworlder 6y ago
This sounds like the Lisp curse.

nvarsj 6y ago

This is well described. Nix is fundamentally a different way to manage an OS compared to almost anything out there. While I think the ideas behind it are revolutionary and is the right way to build infra, the UX and organic growth of it makes it fairly difficult to get into - so there is unfortunately a steep learning curve. I think I sunk a solid 40 hours into building a declarative config for my own dev machine before I had a decent (but far from complete) understanding. But once you grasp it, it is quite mind blowing, and you wonder how anyone could cope with traditional mutable systems and the associated temperamental config management. I think Guix might be the answer as a more approachable implementation of the Nix ideas, using Scheme for its config language. I haven't spent much time with it but I got going a lot quicker initially compared to Nix.

takeda 6y ago
> I think Guix might be the answer as a more approachable implementation of the Nix ideas, using Scheme for its config language. I haven't spent much time with it but I got going a lot quicker initially compared to Nix. Out of curiosity, did you tried Guix before trying Nix or vice versa? When looking at Guix myself, all I see is that the derivations are just wrapped in parentheses otherwise they do look similar. So I'm wondering if scheme actually brings anything here, especially for someone not familiar with a functional language. IMO Nix language isn't actually that hard, I believe the most complexity comes from nixpkgs and still not adequate documentation of it, so one needs to study its source code.
- nvarsj 6y ago
  I’m probably biased in that I primarily use Emacs and like lisps. So I find guix more approachable right out the box. Learning a new language just to use an OS is quite a big ask and part of the learning hurdle of Nix. It’s too bad that guix uses old style mailing lists for development though. I just can’t be bothered setting up myself for that mode of contribution, so I’ll continue to use NixOS for the indefinite future.

rgoulter 6y ago

> Unfortunately, it kind of makes one feel like being an early adopter of git in a world where no one else uses version control. This is a fantastic analogy. I think it's also worth noting that git's UX is notoriously bad for newcomers. These days I'm pretty comfortable with digging myself out of any hole I might mistakenly get into with git. But when I first started using it, all I could do was trivial uses of add/commit/push/pull/merge. I think the equivalent of "trivial uses of the basics" in Nix would be a "for this use case: just do it this way. You'll understand why later".

carlmr 6y ago

>it seems to work better to build an understanding up rather than down. I think especially because it's so different you should start with broad concepts and examples, so that the learner can create a broad mental model where they can fill in the details. Otherwise if you hit them with a barrage of details they won't remember any of them later on, because they don't fit anywhere into a broader concept and are disorganized. Give a few examples that do something useful, show what they're doing differently than other package managers, then break down these examples into the details.

outworlder 6y ago

This sounds like the Lisp curse.