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> Nix-the-language is the worst programming language I've ever had the misfortune to interact with Nix-the-language is just a subset of Javascript with built-i

> Nix-the-language is the worst programming language I've ever had the misfortune to interact with Nix-the-language is just a subset of Javascript with built-in laziness and a slightly different syntax. An absolute bog-standard and mainstream way of thinking about programs in 2025. That said, Nix-the-language also suffers from all the same birth defects that manifest themselves in frontend development.

grep_name 1y ago
> That said, Nix-the-language also suffers from all the same birth defects that manifest themselves in frontend development That must be it. The GP's comment really resonated with me, in that learning scheme felt like no task at all whereas I STILL feel uncomfortable with the nix programming language and ecosystem despite using nixOS exclusively on my personal laptop for two years and on my work machine for about half a year now. I've always fumbled over frontend / javascript development though, and avoid it as much as I can at work although I still end up working in it every year or so. Nix only won out for me because of the mac compatibility, without which I can't really use it at work
- 0x457 1y ago
  I think nix-the-language is pretty simple and easy to learn language. It's visually hard to parse and a lot of syntax decisions make you wonder, but it's not the worst. The problem is that you're very rarely exposed to it directly. You are always multiple layers of abstractions away from it. Most of these layers are completely undocumented.
fake-name 1y ago
I mean, that's a distinction without a difference. I've not written nix, but javascript is a ugly, terrible language. It would make sense that if nix derives from it (whyyyyyy) it would also be terrible.
- bspammer 1y ago
  I disagree with GP, it’s much more like Haskell than JavaScript. Function application is whitespace, functions can only have one argument, everything is an expression, let blocks are the way you define and scope variables. I see very little relation to JavaScript at all, to be honest.
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    You've listed syntactic sugar, not anything about the actual language.
    - bspammer 1y ago
      I don't see any sense where syntactic sugar is not part of the language. I don't really care about how it works behind the scenes, the syntax is the part that I touch as a programmer.
yencabulator 1y ago
Yes, clearly every general-purpose language like Javascript has specialized the string type for the business domain of text-templating for bash scripts. For example: https://shealevy.com/blog/2018/08/05/understanding-nixs-string-context/ https://shealevy.com/blog/2018/08/05/understanding-nixs-stri...

grep_name 1y ago

> That said, Nix-the-language also suffers from all the same birth defects that manifest themselves in frontend development That must be it. The GP's comment really resonated with me, in that learning scheme felt like no task at all whereas I STILL feel uncomfortable with the nix programming language and ecosystem despite using nixOS exclusively on my personal laptop for two years and on my work machine for about half a year now. I've always fumbled over frontend / javascript development though, and avoid it as much as I can at work although I still end up working in it every year or so. Nix only won out for me because of the mac compatibility, without which I can't really use it at work

0x457 1y ago
I think nix-the-language is pretty simple and easy to learn language. It's visually hard to parse and a lot of syntax decisions make you wonder, but it's not the worst. The problem is that you're very rarely exposed to it directly. You are always multiple layers of abstractions away from it. Most of these layers are completely undocumented.

fake-name 1y ago

I mean, that's a distinction without a difference. I've not written nix, but javascript is a ugly, terrible language. It would make sense that if nix derives from it (whyyyyyy) it would also be terrible.

bspammer 1y ago
I disagree with GP, it’s much more like Haskell than JavaScript. Function application is whitespace, functions can only have one argument, everything is an expression, let blocks are the way you define and scope variables. I see very little relation to JavaScript at all, to be honest.
- otabdeveloper4 1y ago
  You've listed syntactic sugar, not anything about the actual language.
  - bspammer 1y ago
    I don't see any sense where syntactic sugar is not part of the language. I don't really care about how it works behind the scenes, the syntax is the part that I touch as a programmer.

yencabulator 1y ago

Yes, clearly every general-purpose language like Javascript has specialized the string type for the business domain of text-templating for bash scripts. For example: https://shealevy.com/blog/2018/08/05/understanding-nixs-string-context/ https://shealevy.com/blog/2018/08/05/understanding-nixs-stri...