Now with LLMs it's even easier. Writing nix code is hard, but reading it is straightforward because it's declarative, so you can easily review what an LLM produces. And it's not much code either, a simple home manager setup is maybe 100 lines total.
I'd disagree. You're not learning anything if you close your eyes and tell your LLM "set up home manager" - but you'll learn a lot if you read the code it produces, ask clarifying questions, and actually try to understand what is happening. It's just a tool that helps you avoid doing tons of research manually by searching google, and helps you avoid dealing with ugly nix syntax.
It literally isn't. There's are at least three novel syntax concepts in there, and even if you just presented the resulting JSON data, there is still a huge amount of knowledge you need to know what Nix will do with that data.
novel syntax concepts? like semicolons and lambda functions?
> know what Nix will do
you would also need a lot of time to understand what exactly happens in uv/cargo/npm/apt under the hood. if this is all that matters, you should just carry binaries on a thumb drive
1. Install nix / determinate nix
2. Tell your favorite llm to set up https://github.com/nix-darwin/nix-darwin with home manager if you are on mac, or just home manager if you are on linux
3. Review the code and ask for clarifications
You'll have a set up in 20 minutes.