Some parts were controversial → make separate PR’s for those
Controversial was: Organization of tutorials
Problem: Headers aren’t drop-downs → All top-level tutorials can’t be hidden, sending the other sections off the screen, sidebar should be visible on desktop
Solution: Categorize tutorials into subsections
Problem: Some sections aren’t very relevant for new learners, can be roughly put into
Iirc @kookie is working on a tutorial/explanation for the module system, should also be in there
End goal can be something complicated (e.g. Python env), but we can incrementally get there:
nix-shell
shell.nix with pip/python
Managing Python dependencies with Nix
@erooke: Generally agree with this. With Nix it’s hard to pick a story and avoid bikeshedding. For Django it’s easy, you build a web app, for Nix not so clear becausne there’s many things you can do
@khaled: Generally also agree, makes people care about Nix at all, which a goal can clearly demonstrate with a hard example. We can show how Nix is not ecosystem-specific, other language PM’s can’t bring in tools from various ecosystems
@zmitchell: Do need to pick something, maybe focus on a large story. Might not work to have “first steps python”, “first steps rust”. Still should have a general first tutorial
How much do we need to show people the magic of Nix? If they’re on nix.dev they’ve probably already seen some.
E.g. if we pick Python, we could show CPython that needs system libraries, e.g. numpy/scipy using BLAS.
@infinisil: High-level goal: Using NixOS tests, integration tests, having everything work automatically
@khaled: Good goal, not easy to do otherwise. Something that would make me want to go deeper, something seemingly difficult, build towards that.
@zmitchell: What’s a project that would involve most things we want to teach
Show people how to get unstuck on their own. That’s what experts know
@infinisil: Backwards thinking probably more like: Pick end goal, break it down into steps, show people how to get unstuck for each step for things they might run into
@zmitchell: Set up environment to do Nix-agnostic work
@zmitchell: Full integration test sounds compelling, starting with a tease showing a single file doing all of the set up.
@infinisil: Not that hard even, nixos tests are nice, also leads into NixOS
@erooke: Nix is really good for pulling a lot of different things, devops, testing sounds very powerful
@khaled: Also agree integration test sounds good. Problem might be macOS though.