All these wrappers are there because nixpkgs doesn't have non-awkward ways to deal with the stuff people deal with often. Nix the language is probably the least

All these wrappers are there because nixpkgs doesn't have non-awkward ways to deal with the stuff people deal with often. Nix the language is probably the least of the issues, it's maybe a few % of the chaotic Nix ecosystem. Most of the logic (that desperately needs proper documentation) is in nixpkgs and tooling.