Comment by soraminazuki

> I just checked, and "First steps with Nix" starts with "Ad hoc shell environments", not anything to do with `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix`

So many people get started with Nix, not NixOS. Once see how useful it is, they then begin migrating their existing systems over to NixOS.

Not only that, but ad hoc shell environments are one the most common use cases. Putting that in the forefront of the official documentation is helpful. I also somehow can't help but think that if the official documentation followed your advice and started off with configuration.nix before explaining the Nix basics, you'd have a problem with that just the same.