Yeah, I think that nix.dev is a much better resource for getting started with Nix quickly.
I wrote How to Learn Nix mostly out of curiosity: I was interested in Nix as a concept, and I didn't really know what it could do going into it. I picked the title long before it became clear that reading the official documentation was not a good way to actually learn how to use Nix. "The Nix Diaries" or something would be a lot more accurate.
That said I don't know what a better approach would look like. nix.dev and tutorials like that are very useful, but my (possibly outdated) understanding is that they never take a step back and explain how or why things work. So you can follow along with what they're doing, following a carefully lain road, but as soon as the road ends you find yourself in the middle of nowhere without a map of your surroundings. (This was how I initially tried to "learn Nix" in 2016, and basically gave up on it -- nix.dev didn't exist back then, but I followed various random online tutorials.)
I think it's a good idea to come at it from both sides, and How to Learn Nix is much more in the "build intuition" camp than the "get something done" camp. I'm glad you're finding it useful, though!
I wrote How to Learn Nix mostly out of curiosity: I was interested in Nix as a concept, and I didn't really know what it could do going into it. I picked the title long before it became clear that reading the official documentation was not a good way to actually learn how to use Nix. "The Nix Diaries" or something would be a lot more accurate.
That said I don't know what a better approach would look like. nix.dev and tutorials like that are very useful, but my (possibly outdated) understanding is that they never take a step back and explain how or why things work. So you can follow along with what they're doing, following a carefully lain road, but as soon as the road ends you find yourself in the middle of nowhere without a map of your surroundings. (This was how I initially tried to "learn Nix" in 2016, and basically gave up on it -- nix.dev didn't exist back then, but I followed various random online tutorials.)
I think it's a good idea to come at it from both sides, and How to Learn Nix is much more in the "build intuition" camp than the "get something done" camp. I'm glad you're finding it useful, though!