I am not a (current) developer, though I have more dev experience than most laypeople. I have enough experience with languages to pick up a new one relatively e

I am not a (current) developer, though I have more dev experience than most laypeople. I have enough experience with languages to pick up a new one relatively easily but I’ve never done anything with a functional language. I installed NixOS after playing around with nix (the package manager) in Fedora. 1. While the WHAT of NixOS was obvious from the start, I have never had a more difficult time understanding HOW to get there with a piece of technology. The documentation is hilariously inconsistent. 2. I have also never encountered a more satisfying, useful, and time-saving piece of technology. I had a computer crash and it took me 15 minutes to be back to where I was on a completely different machine with about 2 commands. 3. Time-saving other than the vast learning curve anyway. 4. Unlike some tech projects, it’s not hard because it’s incomplete or poorly structured. It’s hard because it’s doing something different. (It’s arguable how different it is in 2024, but that’s a different conversation.) 5. To create my child’s account, I spent about 10 minutes editing a copy of my config to pick and choose the packages he needs, and it deployed (on the first go) in about 10 minutes, fully configured. Projects like fleek that put a simplified face on nix are incredibly valuable, because they can unlock 65% of the benefit of the platform with almost zero effort. I can’t tell you if the time investment for the extra 35% is worth it for someone managing family computers, but, y’all, I spend less time fiddling with them now and they break less often. That’s a … plus?