In reply to @infinisil:matrix.org
Speaking of which, I think https://github.com/NixOS/nix.dev/pull/645 is now ready to be merged (we agreed to merge it once the headers are updated), though CI fails, will fix

In reply to @proofconstruction:matrix.org

The goal is not to have users for the sake of having contribution. The goal is to allow newcomers to learn this tool, so that they too may improve their life through its use.

The trouble here is that non-contributing users (I was one for my first ~6 years using Nix!) are usually not also non- consuming, in the sense of requiring additional resources from teams that already don't have them. Hence the docs effort: well-designed (in particular, narratively-consistent) documentation can be a tremendous force multiplier for teaching, but the Nix ecosystem broadly does not have well-designed docs; famously so! We (again now speaking for others) do in fact want to improve lives by getting more people into effective Nix use, but this is in tension with Nix not actually being a very good tool: its edges are very sharp, and many cut themselves and wind up here looking for aid. That Nix works at all is very nearly a miracle. A chainsaw is useful too, but I don't want to leave one lying around for others to hurt themselves or others with, and right now the hard decision for many of us is between building a sheath for the saw and writing an instruction manual for it. Neither of these are reasonable approaches to the problem of new people running into trouble after picking up the cool saw.

I very much agree with you on this too. 100%.

I think what is special about Nix currently isn't its present day manifestation, but rather the fact that it exists at all, and even in this "sharp-edged" (broken) form, it is a proof of concept of how things could be, if we didn't take an ad hoc, cowboy attitude to everything.

(So it always surprises me that Nix-lang has the shape it does, especially given the intellectual culture it is a product of....)

When you mentioned this, I think I realized an implicit assumption I had made (and I am not sure why I made this, in hindsight!): that flakes/experimental stuff was about taking steps towards improving in Nix as a tool. I am now beginning to realize that they might actually be exactly more cowboy stuff on top of a foundation of cowboy stuff (i.e. no formal, written specification...sigh)

So yeah, overall, I do think we are in strong alignment.

In reply to @infinisil:matrix.org
henrik-ch: Did you perhaps already complete a walk through the tutorial?

In reply to @infinisil:matrix.org
henrik-ch: Did you perhaps already complete a walk through the tutorial?