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Vincent tells me that saying "London, UK" is a very *American* thing to do. I think that is his polite way of telling me that it's naive.
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| title | date | draft |
|---|---|---|
| Lets Learn Nix | 2020-03-13T21:50:47Z | false |
Background
Nix may be the most useful tool that I use. I consider it as valuable as Git or Emacs. My friend, David (@dmjio), first introduced me to Nix when we worked together at a Haskell startup in NYC. Before this, I had been managing my system configuration using software that I wrote -- first in Bash, then in Python, then in Golang.
It took me awhile to understand Nix. I left the NYC startup, joined Google, and relocated to London. Here I met another Nix-enlightened monk, Vincent (@tazjin), who patiently taught me enough Nix to become self-reliant and productive.
Many resources exist to learn Nix; the Nix community on IRC continues to help me and others effectively use Nix. I'm creating this series to write the tutorials that I would have found useful when I started learning Nix. If you are just beginning your Nix journey, I hope these tutorials help you.
Goals
I aim to make each tutorial in the "Let's Learn Nix" series:
- Actionable: Readers will be writing code.
- Digestible: Readers should be able to finish each tutorial in fifteen minutes.
- Reproducible: Readers should expect the output of their code to match what these tutorials claim they should see.
About the author
My name is William (@wpcarro). My three favorite tools are Git, Emacs, and Nix. I am an American expat currently working at Google in London. While during the day I primarily write Java, Python, and TypeScript, I prefer functional programming. I use Nix to deploy software and manage the multiple machines across which I work.
Let's Begin
Before we get started, Nix is a programming language. To familiarize yourself with the syntax, semantics, and idioms, consider reading this brief Nix One Pager. I recommend keeping it around as a reference.
When I was first learning Nix, I wanted to use it to manage my dotfiles. Our first tutorial will help you get started: Let's Learn Nix: Dotfiles