<story><title>We want to make Nix better</title><url>https://determinate.systems/posts/we-want-to-make-nix-better</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Jeaye</author><text>Writing the packaging expressions should not be harder than writing the program, for the average developer. The average developer doesn&amp;#x27;t know FP, at this point. Nix needs:&lt;p&gt;1. Approachability for those not indoctrinated in lazy, declarative, functional programming (i.e. Haskell); nope, Nix Pills are not sufficient for the average dev&lt;p&gt;2. Editor tooling to help guide the writing of expressions (just as anyone learning C# or Rust can use LSP); a better type system for Nix would help here&lt;p&gt;3. Better documentation for practical things like &amp;quot;Using Nix to manage the dependencies and package a C++ program using Meson&amp;quot;, rather than having people piece this together from a bunch of disparate docs&lt;p&gt;4. A much better CLI UX than `nix-env -qa` and the like (this is ongoing and experimental, but even that broke recently, causing lots of confusion; now it requires `nix --extra-experimental-features nix-command --extra-experimental-features flakes search nixpkgs`)&lt;p&gt;5. To seriously answer the question: is the Nix language required for the Nix packaging system to exist? Laziness is required, to some degree, but can the next iteration provide an on-ramp which doesn&amp;#x27;t involve learning a new lang and paradigm? Guix folks sure think so.&lt;p&gt;I feel like Nix folks have been focused so long on solving the tough problems of declarative, deterministic packaging that they haven&amp;#x27;t been able to focus on the UX. I also feel like folks for whom Haskell is comfortable may not realize just how absurd it feels to everyone else. Perhaps like the early days of Git.&lt;p&gt;I do really hope Nix succeeds in this, though; I&amp;#x27;ve been using it, or it&amp;#x27;s been using me, for several years. [1] and [2] for more info.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.jeaye.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;nixos&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.jeaye.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;nixos&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.jeaye.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;nixos-revisited&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.jeaye.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;nixos-revisited&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>We want to make Nix better</title><url>https://determinate.systems/posts/we-want-to-make-nix-better</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>grhmc</author><text>With Eelco as a cofounder of DetSys, I feel really excited about where we&amp;#x27;re going here. I think the world is in &lt;i&gt;many&lt;/i&gt; ways primed and ready for Nix, as long as we can help Nix &amp;quot;meet them in the middle.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re working on making Nix more accessible and producing good and usable, production-ready workflows so teams can just pick it up and go. I&amp;#x27;d love to hear what y&amp;#x27;all think, to help make sure we&amp;#x27;re going in the right direction.</text></comment>