I like to think of the nix ecosystem as an Olympic-size pool. These pools caused me a great deal of stress when I was a child, not because I feared drowning, bu

I like to think of the nix ecosystem as an Olympic-size pool. These pools caused me a great deal of stress when I was a child, not because I feared drowning, but because I felt like I could not fully understand their enormity. I learned to swim despite this fear, and what finally helped me get over the fear, more than my swimming ability, was focusing on my purpose or activity within the pool. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the scope of everything within nix. So much of it is great. Many things aren't great at all. I do much better with it when I stop trying to take in the depth of it all and focus on the one small thing I want to do with it at any time. If there's something small and focused that you want to do with nix that elicits joy within you, I think it is good to dive in and learn enough to do that thing. I really like development environments as a focus, but that aligns with my personal and professional interest, and perhaps you want orthogonal systems or containers or application builds instead. There is something to the understanding that comes through experience, but it's not because it helps me realize the thing I can see in my head, but rather because it will sometimes reach out through the machine and slap me very hard in the face. I have been dealing with this issue[1] since it began. It is pervasive, and it is painful. But it helps me realize how fragile this ecosystem we work with is, and it gives me satisfaction knowing that I belong to a group that might happen to surface issues present in safety-critical systems through nothing more than ceaseless rigor. I hope you will join us at some point. I am confident that you will find it enriching. [1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/175875 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/175875