[null_point]

> In a world of horrendously complex software developed by myriads of authors, be smart, use Nix

I mean, Nix is pretty complex software, and is an added layer of abstraction in many contexts. Framing Nix as a solution to complexity seems to be a tenuous claim.

What Nix can help with, imo, is reducing toil. And a good abstraction maintained by a team can reduce toil for a lot of others.

[ris]

> Framing Nix as a solution to complexity seems to be a tenuous claim.

Disagree strongly. Building a large and varied set of software packages in a generalised and reproducible way is a fundamentally complex endeavour, and nixpkgs is the most successful effort I've encountered to simplify it.

In contrast, build & packaging systems that try to present apparent "simplicity" are usually ignoring a lot of the subtle difficulties in building software in a reproducible and robust manner, leading to extended and vague debugging sessions. See for instance almost any non-trivial Dockerfile-based build procedure.

[null_point]

I use Nix every day. I love it, but I'd be lying if I claimed it things less complex. I don't think that is very controversial. To build software using Nix you still need to understand how that software builds without Nix plus you need to know some amount of Nix. If the abstraction was airtight, then I'd agree, but currently, it is a very leaky abstraction. But that doesn't mean it's bad, just a trade-off to consider.