> The Nix language is designed for conveniently creating and composing derivations – precise descriptions of how contents of existing files are used to derive new files.
I’m getting Wikipedia math vibes.
"1990 - A committee formed by Simon Peyton-Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, Ashton Kutcher, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals creates Haskell, a pure, non-strict, functional language. Haskell gets some resistance due to the complexity of using monads to control side effects. Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?""
Math people: "What if we made software code more like mathematical proofs?"
Idk. What if you had dated before age 38?
[0] http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
> pkgs.mkShell is a specialized stdenv.mkDerivation that removes some repetition when using it with nix-shell (or nix develop).
Producing books demand a significant effort, especially if it's a teaching book, not a mere reference and still cover enough, keeping it up to date in a modern project it's almost a nightmare, so videos and examples remain the quickest and easiest solution.
Personally the main issue I have with NixOS is:
- the Nix language, especially compared to Guix System
- the lack of quickly digestible AND still deep enough docs
I've using NixOS as my main desktop and homeserver since some years and I still have to know Nix enough to be really "confident enough"...
Text guides will often skip steps because they assume the reader will know what to do.
As anybody can just hit record on a video and log the entire thing, having a reference video for a process is easy enough, as is turning a video into a transcript automatically that can then be embellished upon. Screenshots can also be taken from videos if there's something visual that may be lost in text.
