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The Nix crowd is becoming a lot like the Rust crowd-- they hijack every conversation with "Have you tried Nix"? Like you, I find Nix hard to use and the docs c

The Nix crowd is becoming a lot like the Rust crowd-- they hijack every conversation with "Have you tried Nix"? Like you, I find Nix hard to use and the docs confusing (beyond trivial examples). The amount of time the Nix mafia spends proselyting could be better spent making better docs

tannhaeuser 5y ago
I agree. I've got nothing against nix, but it frankly sucks that the top comment isn't about asdf which I had hoped to learn about. There should be special "-1 offtopic" comment flagging because it's a frequent phenomenon.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  As a fan of Nix and NixOS, I agree with this assessment. Too often people hijack threads about a topic to discuss something related but totally different and off-topic. It's kind of annoying, even when I'm a fan of the off-topic thing. I've never heard of asdf and popped in here to read about it, people's experiences with it, etc. If I want to read about Nix/OS I'll find a thread on that, or go to /r/nixos, etc.
  - ravi-delia 5y ago
    I mean, just minimize the comment? I like seeing discussion on many related aspects of an article, it's cool seeing how things compare.
  - leaflets2 5y ago
    > Too often people hijack threads about a topic to discuss something related but totally different and off-topic And what are you doing :-)
    - SkyMarshal 5y ago
      Hijacking the hijacking of the thread ;p
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I feel like what you are critiquing is explicitly something HN encourages.
- ris 5y ago
  > the top comment isn't about asdf which I had hoped to learn about Oh I think you're using HN wrong. To learn about the subject you can read the actual article that's linked to. No guarantees about the comments section.
jjgreen 5y ago
They do seem to share a fondness for executing curl output
- caymanjim 5y ago
  This criticism is getting old. Piping curl output to bash is no less secure than installing a package via any other mechanism. Either you trust the source or you don't. I trust it more than I trust npm or pip because I'm typically getting it from the primary source instead of relying on a middleman that's got a poor track record.
  - jjgreen 5y ago
    It may be old, but it is valid, and it allows me to mock Rust and Nix advocates at the same time; who could resist?
  - leaflets2 5y ago
    If there's a SHA hash, served by a different server, an attacker would have to compromise both -- now just one?
    - rgoulter 5y ago
      "Someone else replaces the good program with a malicious program" is the attack vector people are worried about when talking about sha256. But, since you're downloading & running code written by someone else, it seems weird to talk about that but ignore "what if this program I'm downloading does something malicious".
      - d110af5ccf 5y ago
        Presumably you trust the authors or you wouldn't be downloading it to begin with. The primary concern isn't "what if the authors are out to get me" it's "what if someone impersonates or compromises the authors".
        5y ago
cwp 5y ago
Yeah, frustration on both sides here. On one hand, I can see how the nix evangelism can get annoying, especially here on HN. On the other hand the nix crowd is seeing a parade of ad hoc, informally-specified, niche implementations of way-less-than-half of nixpkgs. This is an important problem, maybe one of this most important problems the tech world is grappling with right now, and there is already a solution. The reality is that the docs are fine. The reference material is comprehensive, and there are some very good tutorials and introductory essays to get people started. The problem is that it's difficult. Nix is very, very different from what people already know, and it takes quite a bit of effort to learn how it works. Most people just aren't prepared to do that much work just to install some software.
- w-j-w 5y ago
  The ad-hoc solutions you're talking about are often highly usable, a virtue often forgotten by software evangelists. Nix's learning curve will keep away people who are disciplined in avoiding yak-shaving, as the language specific version enables productivity now. Maybe adding a layer on top of Nix, like create-react-app is to webpack, can make it a better option for immediate productivity oriented developers.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    A positive of taking the nix brick road is if you get bored of software development you'll have enough yak fur to retire.
- airza 5y ago
  If the problem is that it's difficult and the documentation is not making that difficulty simple enough to use, then the documents are not fine. Simple as.
  - leaflets2 5y ago
    If the problem is that it's difficult to learn to fly a fighter jet, and the documentation is not making it simple, the real problem is that the documentation is not fine. Simple as that.
marcosdumay 5y ago
Hum... Every time I see Nix cited somewhere, it's somebody who tried it and didn't manage to get expertise out of the documentation maze. (You can add me there too.) But it's no wonder that people keep commenting that Nix is an awesome idea that solves a lot of problems. That's because it's an awesome idea that solves a lot of problems (yeah, like Rust). It is also completely undiscoverable (not completely unlike Rust), and that's why almost nobody uses it. But that's a matter of improving the documentation or maybe fixing one or two superficial problems on the language.
- oblio 5y ago
  > But that's a matter of improving the documentation or maybe fixing one or two superficial problems on the language. Based on a quick check of their Wikipedia page, Nix has been around for 15 years, since 2007. So those for sure look like structural problems. I don't know which ones exactly, but paraphrasing Tolstoi, popular software products are popular in much the same way, while unpopular ones are unpopular in their own unique ways. In my experience almost no open source project that hasn't entered the mainstream in its first 10 years manages to turn the ship around, unless it lucks into a major change of environment. Programming languages are sometimes exempt if they have a "killer" library or framework pop up.
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    Nix ain't trying to win marketshare it's trying to be amazing. But it takes guts to be amazing and that means a lot of people don't manage to use Nix. HN tends to see success in terms of adoption rate & ranking. Nix is on another plane. It's beyond critical mass. And for people like me, it is a huge force multiplier. But I had to grind my way to the point where that is true. I tend to not bother selling people on it. People who want what Nix does will find it at some point. So I just focus on using Nix myself in a world of worse tools. Feels great.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      Oh, I'm not selling these cars. No, no. These babies sell themselves.
smohare 5y ago
That’s funny because the documentation is fairly good. Short attention span?
- exdsq 5y ago
  Life is too short to spend hundreds or thousands of hours learning a tool to save you time. Nix might give you 'perfect' reproducible builds but does the time saved from this beat the time taken to learn it? I'm skeptical.

tannhaeuser 5y ago

I agree. I've got nothing against nix, but it frankly sucks that the top comment isn't about asdf which I had hoped to learn about. There should be special "-1 offtopic" comment flagging because it's a frequent phenomenon.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
As a fan of Nix and NixOS, I agree with this assessment. Too often people hijack threads about a topic to discuss something related but totally different and off-topic. It's kind of annoying, even when I'm a fan of the off-topic thing. I've never heard of asdf and popped in here to read about it, people's experiences with it, etc. If I want to read about Nix/OS I'll find a thread on that, or go to /r/nixos, etc.
- ravi-delia 5y ago
  I mean, just minimize the comment? I like seeing discussion on many related aspects of an article, it's cool seeing how things compare.
- leaflets2 5y ago
  > Too often people hijack threads about a topic to discuss something related but totally different and off-topic And what are you doing :-)
  - SkyMarshal 5y ago
    Hijacking the hijacking of the thread ;p
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I feel like what you are critiquing is explicitly something HN encourages.
ris 5y ago
> the top comment isn't about asdf which I had hoped to learn about Oh I think you're using HN wrong. To learn about the subject you can read the actual article that's linked to. No guarantees about the comments section.

jjgreen 5y ago

They do seem to share a fondness for executing curl output

caymanjim 5y ago
This criticism is getting old. Piping curl output to bash is no less secure than installing a package via any other mechanism. Either you trust the source or you don't. I trust it more than I trust npm or pip because I'm typically getting it from the primary source instead of relying on a middleman that's got a poor track record.
- jjgreen 5y ago
  It may be old, but it is valid, and it allows me to mock Rust and Nix advocates at the same time; who could resist?
- leaflets2 5y ago
  If there's a SHA hash, served by a different server, an attacker would have to compromise both -- now just one?
  - rgoulter 5y ago
    "Someone else replaces the good program with a malicious program" is the attack vector people are worried about when talking about sha256. But, since you're downloading & running code written by someone else, it seems weird to talk about that but ignore "what if this program I'm downloading does something malicious".
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
      Presumably you trust the authors or you wouldn't be downloading it to begin with. The primary concern isn't "what if the authors are out to get me" it's "what if someone impersonates or compromises the authors".
      - 5y ago

cwp 5y ago

Yeah, frustration on both sides here. On one hand, I can see how the nix evangelism can get annoying, especially here on HN. On the other hand the nix crowd is seeing a parade of ad hoc, informally-specified, niche implementations of way-less-than-half of nixpkgs. This is an important problem, maybe one of this most important problems the tech world is grappling with right now, and there is already a solution. The reality is that the docs are fine. The reference material is comprehensive, and there are some very good tutorials and introductory essays to get people started. The problem is that it's difficult. Nix is very, very different from what people already know, and it takes quite a bit of effort to learn how it works. Most people just aren't prepared to do that much work just to install some software.

w-j-w 5y ago
The ad-hoc solutions you're talking about are often highly usable, a virtue often forgotten by software evangelists. Nix's learning curve will keep away people who are disciplined in avoiding yak-shaving, as the language specific version enables productivity now. Maybe adding a layer on top of Nix, like create-react-app is to webpack, can make it a better option for immediate productivity oriented developers.
- exdsq 5y ago
  A positive of taking the nix brick road is if you get bored of software development you'll have enough yak fur to retire.
airza 5y ago
If the problem is that it's difficult and the documentation is not making that difficulty simple enough to use, then the documents are not fine. Simple as.
- leaflets2 5y ago
  If the problem is that it's difficult to learn to fly a fighter jet, and the documentation is not making it simple, the real problem is that the documentation is not fine. Simple as that.

marcosdumay 5y ago

Hum... Every time I see Nix cited somewhere, it's somebody who tried it and didn't manage to get expertise out of the documentation maze. (You can add me there too.) But it's no wonder that people keep commenting that Nix is an awesome idea that solves a lot of problems. That's because it's an awesome idea that solves a lot of problems (yeah, like Rust). It is also completely undiscoverable (not completely unlike Rust), and that's why almost nobody uses it. But that's a matter of improving the documentation or maybe fixing one or two superficial problems on the language.

oblio 5y ago
> But that's a matter of improving the documentation or maybe fixing one or two superficial problems on the language. Based on a quick check of their Wikipedia page, Nix has been around for 15 years, since 2007. So those for sure look like structural problems. I don't know which ones exactly, but paraphrasing Tolstoi, popular software products are popular in much the same way, while unpopular ones are unpopular in their own unique ways. In my experience almost no open source project that hasn't entered the mainstream in its first 10 years manages to turn the ship around, unless it lucks into a major change of environment. Programming languages are sometimes exempt if they have a "killer" library or framework pop up.
- whateveracct 5y ago
  Nix ain't trying to win marketshare it's trying to be amazing. But it takes guts to be amazing and that means a lot of people don't manage to use Nix. HN tends to see success in terms of adoption rate & ranking. Nix is on another plane. It's beyond critical mass. And for people like me, it is a huge force multiplier. But I had to grind my way to the point where that is true. I tend to not bother selling people on it. People who want what Nix does will find it at some point. So I just focus on using Nix myself in a world of worse tools. Feels great.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Oh, I'm not selling these cars. No, no. These babies sell themselves.

smohare 5y ago

That’s funny because the documentation is fairly good. Short attention span?

exdsq 5y ago
Life is too short to spend hundreds or thousands of hours learning a tool to save you time. Nix might give you 'perfect' reproducible builds but does the time saved from this beat the time taken to learn it? I'm skeptical.