I'm with you on onboarding in terms of docs and naming. The problem got worse before it started to get better with the pivot to a much improved shell experience

I'm with you on onboarding in terms of docs and naming. The problem got worse before it started to get better with the pivot to a much improved shell experience, but we'll hopefully start to see improvement. The Nix language, however, is about what it needs to be. I don't like it, mind you, but I think it strikes the right balance between config format and programming language. There are things I'd tweak, but it's pretty much what it needs to be. Any similarity to Haskell is mostly coincidental. Because of that, it's also not especially hard to learn. If you'd like to give Nix a shot, I think you'll find that it doesn't need to be your hobby to be useful quickly.