[JohnMakin]

The problem is most configuration languages are declarative vs imperative like most “real” languages are. You could probably levy the same complaint against declarative languages in general - it’s just a different way of thinking

[kokada]

Nix as used in NixOS is a declarative language and there is none of the issues I cited by being a "real" programming language (or as the article talks about, having "abstractions" like builtin.map). You can pretty easily setup a LSP to get code-completion (even between different projects, like NixOS vs Home-Manager). There is no proper type system in Nix but the module system does supplement it well.