I learned Nix a couple days ago because I needed a build system for my project that could handle many different tools: Java+Gradle, Thrift, Rust, Python, CUDA,

I learned Nix a couple days ago because I needed a build system for my project that could handle many different tools: Java+Gradle, Thrift, Rust, Python, CUDA, etc. It's been kind of a pain: Docker is easier to get started with. But the payoff seems higher because it does handle all these tools in a sensible way: For development I can switch between subprojects written in many different languages and get the exact Python, Java, etc. and all necessary libraries are in scope. I've gotten it working on Linux, and I expect a little more work porting to Mac OS for teammates(mostly for things like switching from CUDA to CPU based on system), but using it should be similar to Linux. Mac doesn't support cgroups or Linux containers so sandboxing is weaker than Linux, so it's better to develop Nix projects on Linux and add other platforms afterward. I would recommend it for polyglot or Python projects. But for single-language projects with a sensible dependency manager(Rust Cargo), there's not as much benefit.