[utdemir]

As someone who is using NixOS for 8+ years, I do agree with both your problems.

(1) I do find that it's very rare having to implement a low level transitive dependency from scratch (most low-level system dependencies are already there, and for dependencies of a specific programming-language ecosystem you'd usually auto-generate them from things like `yarn2nix` or `poetry2nix`). However, I agree that once you need to do that for non-trivial library it quickly becomes painful and require intimate knowledge of both the build system and Nix environment.

(2) This is my main issue. My workflow is also having a local `nixpkgs` clone, and go find the function and the parameters I can use every time I don't remember how to use it. I also think that it is sustainable. There are many exciting improvements going on with the new CLI, so hopefully we will get nicer error messages and better tooling support in near future.

> but the execution has been a miserable experience for me to the extent that I can't make sense of people who report such positive experiences.

There are pain points, but the advantages for me were indispensable. Being able to pin dependencies accurately, reproduce an exact development environment deterministically, and use the single language to define applications, configurations, and even entire system images is a great benefit that I would need to use 10+ tools with individual quirks otherwise.