I love the idea of nix but the inconsistency and developer experience is terrible. I want to suggest people use it but there is too many rough edges currently.

For example, if you want to install a package the old way, you'll install it including the channel:

    nix-env -iA nixpkgs.ripgrep

but then if you want to remove one, you don't reference the channel:

    nix-env -e ripgrep

You have a similar issue if you want to use the new `nix` command. To install a package you'll do:

    nix profile install nixpkgs#ripgrep

but running:

    nix profile remove nixpkgs#ripgrep

will do nothing. It won't say "I didn't remove the package" or "package not found". It just returns silently. The only way to remove it is to point to the number from `nix profile history` or the actual path.

It is unbearably slow:

    > time nix-env -qaP ripgrep
    nixpkgs.ripgrep  ripgrep-13.0.0

    11.17s user 2.70s system 73% cpu 18.970 total

Overall I love the idea but it has a long way to go in developer experience and quality before it is ready for any mainstream adoption.

chrisweekly

Thank you sincerely for this public service announcement. We might joke about getting "nerd-sniped", but it really can be difficult to predict ROI when choosing which new things merit attention. This glimpse into real DX issues probably saved me (and many others) some real time and frustration.

OTOH I want to encourage those who do have the time and inclination to get involved and improve those things and help reify the good ideas / fulfill their potential.

_huayra_

I really wanted to love Nix and tried my best to ease into it, e.g. using it as a "pip" replacement for Python, then managing dotfiles, etc. Maybe I chose the wrong side of the "flakes schism", but it was so foggy and unclear how one went from "lazily evaluated attribute set" to "an actual system".

I really wish this was written in something even like Haskell or Ocaml, that has actual real language support and tooling. Troubleshooting attribute errors was just not possible and I gave up (GUIX looks awesome, but I can't really use shepherd unfortunately).

It really says something when I found myself looking to Gentoo as an "easier, well-thought-out alternative"...

carlmr

>I really wish this was written in something even like Haskell or Ocaml, that has actual real language support and tooling. Troubleshooting attribute errors was just not possible and I gave up (GUIX looks awesome, but I can't really use shepherd unfortunately).

The 3 times I've tried to use Nix (and invariably gave up), I always came to this conclusion.

A language like F#/OCaml with great typing and type inference and good auto completion could get us half the way to usability.

Smaug123

Nickel Is Coming! https://github.com/tweag/nickel, e.g. https://github.com/tweag/nickel/blob/master/examples/polymor... . Looks really exciting to me!