100% this. The language is designed for its use case which is packaging and configuration (nothing more or less). It has a learning curve due to being lazy and functional but works great once you get the hang of it. But the documentation of all its functions is so annoying. You have builtins and the nixpkgs functions[1]. There is learning the language, and then learning how to use it. Then there is the entire ecosystem of custom packaging functions that have their own pros/cons [2]. The issue isn’t with the language but the difficulty with trying to make existing tooling work the Nix way. That part is where I agree with the curse of nix. But the effort is worth it because once the packaging is complete it just works (forever).

1: Best resource I’ve found is this: https://teu5us.github.io/nix-lib.html

2: The status of lang2nix: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/status-of-lang2nix-approaches/...