It sounds like the improved docs have made a difference already, and that's great to hear. Could you name anything else that you think made your more recent experience so much better than your prior one?
External blog posts have helped, it’s easier to Google ‘nix-shell for <foo>’ and copy working code into your local environment. Honestly I couldn’t write hello world in Nix, but I can scrap together bits that work now and hopefully (according to the Nix ethos) will always work.