I read the nixpkgs definitions for my favorite packages, which cleared up quite a lot. Flakes are harder to grok due to how different they behave in different c

I read the nixpkgs definitions for my favorite packages, which cleared up quite a lot. Flakes are harder to grok due to how different they behave in different circumstances, but a lot of it will make sense once you grasp how Nix handles builds. My suggestion - try writing a Flake or package file for a simple binary project. Adjusting that same "happy path" to work for other projects is usually as simple as Googling "nix flake $LANGUAGE template".