[colinsane]

a good deal of users who overcome the usability issues of nix remain ill-equipped to contribute to nix beyond basic packaging. just because i can navigate Linux userland doesn’t mean i have a clue how to navigate the kernel, is i hope a not-terrible metaphor.

[pxc]

Nixpkgs and NixOS also some prolific contributors who never had any prior functional programming experience, so clearly there's a way out. We just have to capture and reproduce that.

[SuperSandro2000]

I still can't really program in a functional programming language.

[pxc]

Exactly. You've learned what you needed to in order to be productive and achieve your goals with Nix, and that hasn't required you to stop everything to take a crash course in functional programming.

Individual functional programming techniques may become interesting to you as you become curious about some implementation details— you might read a bit about 'fixed point recursion' after you chat with some people about how overlays work. But you don't have to think of yourself as a functional programmer to make great use of Nix or even to help solve technical problems in Nixpkgs.

I think some folks hear all the FP talk surrounding Nix and don't realize that there's a lot they can achieve and contribute without being FP wizards. And that sucks. I hope that the ecosystem feels increasingly welcoming to people like that as the documentation and UX continue to improve.