After using NixOS for a bit and eventually learning to rely on it, life without it seems inconceivably complex
Nixos is nice because it just works. When I do a rebuild switch it will take down my affected services gracefully, apply the updates, update my firewall, and start the container all automatically and declaratively.
Plus the owning account and file permissions are explicit so it’s impossible to forget you ran chmod/crown on some script and now your service is over-permissioned.
It’s not magic but it feels like magic because it works so easily and reliably.