you know how if you edit the first line of a 50 line docker file you gotta sit there forever to rerun the entire build? You don't have that issue with Nix.
You know how a Docker file barely has any structure, leading to a lot of bashisms to try and script certain behaviors? Nix doesn't have that issue.
NixOS is an OS you can configure with Nix. A lot less "OK so edit these files to try and configure something, then reboot", a lot more "configure this data structure, then reboot". Makes your system configuration mostly be in the same place, as NixOS will distribute these changes across the file system as needed to get things working. It's pretty nice!
Overall... it ends up being a bit easier to document why you're doing something in a Nix file relative to a Dockerfile, and caching and the like works much more smartly (lots less "move all this stuff to the top/bottom for caching reasons" you might do in a Dockerfile)
("Nix" here means "nix + nixpkgs", which is important since lots of nix-ism are basically downstream of how nixpkgs is written and the patterns used there)
You know how a Docker file barely has any structure, leading to a lot of bashisms to try and script certain behaviors? Nix doesn't have that issue.
NixOS is an OS you can configure with Nix. A lot less "OK so edit these files to try and configure something, then reboot", a lot more "configure this data structure, then reboot". Makes your system configuration mostly be in the same place, as NixOS will distribute these changes across the file system as needed to get things working. It's pretty nice!
Overall... it ends up being a bit easier to document why you're doing something in a Nix file relative to a Dockerfile, and caching and the like works much more smartly (lots less "move all this stuff to the top/bottom for caching reasons" you might do in a Dockerfile)
("Nix" here means "nix + nixpkgs", which is important since lots of nix-ism are basically downstream of how nixpkgs is written and the patterns used there)