Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not asking it to be more 'orthodox', I'm asking to not have to spend months scouring poor documentation to learn a new language and toolchain to gain the very few benefits Nix provides over the existing systems. If Nix is so inherently complicated it cannot deliver that, then why would I want it? Ultimately I want less complication in my life, not more, and Nix very much does not provide that from what I can see.
Nix operates at the cusp of some of the most complex and obscure parts of the technology stack: operating systems, compiler toolchains, and package managers. These inherently complex components require a fair bit of commitment to fully comprehend in order to be used well. You can get a lot of mileage skimming through some tutorials to become productive, but to really utilize it to its full potential requires a fair b…
On the other hand, one of Nix's greatest strengths is that in many respects, its innovations are conservative. It brings software building and distribution forward in terms of reproducibility and isolation (like containers do) but (unlike containers) also retains the traditional package management virtues of granularity, efficiency, and sharing common resources (dependencies) when possible.