I wish I understood how to bring new things to Nix. Like, if I have some language or framework with a bunch of plugins and modules, and I have the freedom to bend the framework a bit in order to get it working with Nix, then what is the best path for doing that? All of the documentation I've read seems like it's been written by folks who deeply understand not just each different language, but also some sort of central Nix philosophy.
Any official package from Nix belongs to this single repository, making it easy to see what other packages are doing. If I want to see how python packaging is done, I simply search "python" in the nixpkgs repository.
It's also easier to grasp what is going on in nixpkgs than other packaging systems. The Nix expression language offers better readability than say, RPM spec files. Meanwhile the nixpkgs repository includes support for numerous build systems and frameworks. This combined allows you to create packages with minimal effort most of the time.