> That said, Nix-the-language also suffers from all the same birth defects that manifest themselves in frontend development

That must be it. The GP's comment really resonated with me, in that learning scheme felt like no task at all whereas I STILL feel uncomfortable with the nix programming language and ecosystem despite using nixOS exclusively on my personal laptop for two years and on my work machine for about half a year now. I've always fumbled over frontend / javascript development though, and avoid it as much as I can at work although I still end up working in it every year or so.

Nix only won out for me because of the mac compatibility, without which I can't really use it at work