[tomberek]

I'm reading these.

It seems this is where a better description of what NixOS (and it's module system) is. My suspicion is that by starting with NixOS it is harder to be introduced to the simpler concepts. It is best to think of the NixOS modules as a domain-specific-language on top of Nixpkgs which is itself a large set of conventions on top of the fairly simple Nix language. I think people should be introduced from the bottom up.

> having systemd manage a StateDirectory and creating the unit file/Nomad conf in configuration.nix for the machine

Seems like you did get what you needed working; my best advice to understand that the key abstraction being created is the activation script. Perhaps we never clearly describe all of its moving parts and how it works?

> ... but they are NOT functional programming enthusiasts

I believe the key is for the Nix community messaging/marketing to focus less on the theoretical elegance and more on the practical benefits.