I didn't go all-in with nixos -- and I'm thankful I didn't.

I simply tried using it for local development. I thought that I could replace the various language version managers with nix. I spent weeks working with nix to understand the language, how to use it, and reading as much documentation/blogs as possible.

One really frustrating thing about nix I noticed early on is the lack of support for older language versions. For example, if you want to use something like ruby2.2 you'll get a notice saying that the package is insecure and it won't allow you to install it. They mention an environment variable you can set to get around it but even that didn't work properly. Is my use-case not relevant to nix? Even the simplest requests are met with unavoidable blockers. Frustrating.

Something simple like installing a specific `node` version, corresponding `yarn`, and have it work just as well as `nvm` proved to be a challenge.

I managed to get it working relatively well until I ran into weird issues with native bindings on a project that I have literally never seen before. Issues with `dlopen` and the ilk just made me frustrated enough to post this:

https://twitter.com/neurosnap/status/1485427740610375680?s=2...

I'm not even talking about the final stage of nix where all my npm packages are shasum'd and checked into nix, I'm simply installing two packages: node and yarn. Something this simple didn't work for every project I had. This is all not to mention that I have to add a `flake.nix` and `flake.lock` to every project or create some nix repo where I put all these files.

I love the idea of nix and nixos and really wanted to get it to work. Ultimately it's just not there yet and I'm not sure it ever will be.

Right now, the time you save by using nix is completely lost when you traverse down the rabbit hole of outdated documentation and never ending bugs with the actual system.