mitchmindtree

4 tahun yang laludiscuss

Greg Egan's Permutation City is an all-time favourite. The combination of simulation, cellular automata, garden of eden states and Dust Theory blew my mind as an adult in the same way that the Matrix did when I was a kid. Very keen to check out this new work!

mitchmindtree

5 tahun yang laludiscuss

Yeah, I would really like to see `nix-env -i` recommended far less often, or at least with the caveat that this should only be for testing packages at the most. I still haven't found a good use case for it personally.

One of the big wins for Nix is its declarative nature (especially for reproducibility) and installing packages in an imperative manner like this just seems to put folks back in the same position as using pacman or apt-get. Please correct me if I'm wrong Nix-ers.

Having used NixOS as the main OS on my personal laptop for the past year or two (and loving it), I've only used `nix-env -i` to install a package once, and immediately regretted it after trying to add a different version of the same package to my main configuration files. This resulted in a conflict, which from memory required me to force reinstall the package again via `nix-env` but specify a lower priority so that it could be replaced automatically when enabling the package via my configuration files... A really strange experience that re-affirmed that nix-env is at least not for me.

For testing packages, I would always recommend `nix-shell -p <package>` as a preferred option. Just type `exit` and then you've left the shell, it's no longer in your PATH and there's no risk of conflicts.

It sucks that you ran into this, but also totally understandable. I think generally the community would consider the nix-env approach of installing and updating packakges an anti-pattern these days, but this certainly isn't obvious when reading through the docs.

mitchmindtree

5 tahun yang laludiscuss

Nix has a heavy learning curve and requires learning the language to feel comfortable. However, overcoming that hump is incredibly rewarding and allows for taming your system in a way that, for me at least, changed the way I look at composing software.

At mindbuffer[1] we've started using it for our recent art installations. The big benefits for us are reproducibility, ease of deployment, and the ability to collaborate on the composition of the whole system. I.e. rather than sharing a README of how to install things one by one and hoping each of us has followed it correctly, we just work on the same set of config files via a git repo (like we would any other code) and can be sure we're all on the same page as a result.

Very much looking forward to Nix 3.0 landing with all its UI improvements and flake support. It seems like these changes will go a long way to making Nix more accessible, and provide a smoother on-ramp to learning the language itself.

https://mindbuffer.net/

mitchmindtree

5 tahun yang laludiscuss

On the topic of SSGs, is anyone using styx[1]?

As a keen NixOS user, I love the idea of configuring my site with nix and embedding nix exprs in markdown. However, I'm unsure whether the project is still active, or if the whole thing was more of an experiment. The repo[2] seems a little quiet, but the documentation is extensive and great considering! I wonder if the author just considers it complete? Curious to here experiences from anyone who has had a play.

[1]: https://styx-static.github.io/styx-site/ [2]: https://github.com/styx-static/styx/

mitchmindtree

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

It is probably not the best term, but I'd say it is the term that caught on to describe the use of coding where artistic expression is the main intent. I think the wikipedia entry[1] is pretty accurate with respect to how it is used colloquially.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding

mitchmindtree

6 tahun yang laludiscuss

Co-creator of nannou here, the project is indeed named after this track :)

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