Does Nix still have that extremely steep and high learning curve and huge time invest before you actually grok it? I'd love a Nix that is about as hard to use as homebrew, but no luck so far.
Someone also did a video walkthrough of this material recently. I don't have the link, but it might be worth searching for.
The ticket was closed because the man-page has a technical description of what the command actually does, and people should just know how the command is supposed to work, even if the reference manual tells them otherwise.
Beginner-hostility appears to be baked into the ecosystem.