Comment by bryceneal

I do this too. It's not for everyone. At this point it's easily been positive ROI for me, but that's after about two years now of maintaining my configs through multiple machines and MacOS upgrades.

I would recommend it only if this type of thing naturally interests you. I can't imagine powering through the initial learning curve if it felt like a frustrating chore.

That said, if having (most of) your machine defined declaratively in a git repository sounds exciting/useful/comfy, then I would encourage you to give it a try. You can start small by just configuring a few programs or options and see how you like it.

I wrote more about my experience here where I also link to my configs: https://bryce.is/writing/code/fully-nix-pilled