Preface

My journey to learn nix was only possible by my extreme desire to master it. The path was anything but easy and predictable. And it is still a considerable hurdle for many trying to learn nix.

The goal of this book is to provide newcomers with a more approachable document than the nix-pills series. Although nix-pills is still a very good resource with many years of refinement, it is extensive and hard to follow without some prior knowledge of nix. This book hopes to provide a more recent account of nix with more of a focus on giving the user intuition around what nix is doing rather than a deep understanding like nix-pills.

The goal is not to replace any existing nix guides or documentation, but rather provide a good starting place for new users. Motivation for writing this is to provide a "nix equilavent of the rust-lang book". Where there is one resource which can be read end-to-end in an afternoon and able to equip the reader with the knowledge necessary to thrive in the nix ecosystem.

-- Jonathan Ringer