Fair, another thing I really like is you can do `nix flake show templates` and try to `nix flake init -t templates#trivial` and be like ahh so thats how its supposed to be done or init `full` and be like ok this flake thing can do a lot of things I didn't know it could do, you can then edit, delete and experiment.
It actually is specific to flakes. Classic nix commands can see untracked files just fine. Flake evaluation behaves differently because of how it decides which "scheme" to use:
> If the directory is part of a Git repository, then the input will be treated as a `git+file:` URL, otherwise it will be treated as a `path:` url;
This is why untracked or unstaged files disappear when using flakes:
The flakes were the main UX/DX improvement for me. Before them I honestly could not do anything. The learning curve was so incredibly steep it almost felt like the people behind Nix were being malicious or intentionally gatekeeping. You finally stumble onto something you can at least partly understand, but then the powers that be throw two last obstacles at you like,
First, flakes are "experimental", so you have to enable them. Back then there were like three slightly different CLI commands to do it, and it felt like none worked from like 5 tutorial tabs I had open, putting it `experimental-features =` into flake you are trying to switch to does not work obviously.
Then you hit the classic situation where your flake is not committed or staged, so Nix refuses to see it. And instead of telling you that, it prints this abomination of error message "error: path '/nix/store/0ccnxa25whszw7mgbgyzdm4nqc0zwnm8-source/flake.nix' does not exist" (https://determinate.systems/blog/changelog-determinate-nix-3...)
I would not wish learning Nix from zero on my worst enemy, and I say that as someone who uses nix-darwin, devShells, deploy-rs and so on every day. The UX/DX is really bad, but nothing else comes close to its capabilities.
Sorry for rant but without flakes I would not make it.
I saw exactly the same infinite arms thing with zero prior interest in religion. It took me to place “I was once before and should know well” other entities protested because why bother when he needs to go back soon. Then I came back to my room and had no idea what to do with that experience.
When I saw this mentioned on HN I immediately knew this kind of comment would be there because something along the lines and I am paraphrasing "its probably fast because its not enterprise enough" was repeated in every place the refterm was shared by different people even multiple times even after showing all the proof in the world that its in fact the opposite they almost refused to believe that software can be that much better than its standard today even to the point of bringing up arguments like 16fps terminal is better than 7500 one because so many fps would probably consume to much resources.
Before I found Casey's tone criticizing bad software off putting but now I understand that after many years of such arguments it takes toll on you.