For those who like the concept of Nix, but don't like the Nix language, the Guix package manager [0] might also be worth a try. It's an official GNU project, inspired by Nix, and it uses Guile Scheme instead of Nix language.
Mostly I think Nix would be just as hard if packages were expressed in any language.
Stuff like "this program compiled by nix is using a different glibc than this library" is going to be confusing regardless of whether Nix expressions can be written with JavaScript; or stuff like some program assumes it can write to $HOME in its build script not playing nicely with Nix.
A lot of why Nix is hard is because it's weird, and that even as an end user when things go wrong it may require understanding more about what's going on than what other solutions require.
(Tongue-in-cheek, but I'd actually like to see this happen: Nix is a fantastic concept obscured by space-alien syntax.)
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2022-03/msg001...