30 seconds:<p>Can you build/test/run your organization's software from 5 days/months/years ago - across multiple platforms, systems, and ecosystems - reliably?<p>Can you develop, build, manage, and maintain your software without fear?<p>Do you want a system do the bookkeeping for proper software dependency management? Or do you want people to do it by hand?<p>Do you want a declarative system, or try to remember and keep track of all the changes you've ever made by hand?<p>You don't get these things for free, but if you value them, then Nix is the tool for you. Or at least learn about it so that you can learn from the decades of accumulated knowledge.<p>next 30 seconds:
I can confidently compile and run multiple incompatible versions of software simultaneously. I can build projects from years ago. I can package large projects from different ecosystems (python 2/3, c/c++, go, Javascript, Octave, Rust) and be confident they will not interfere with each other. I can try bleeding edge software with no risk to it interfering with my system. It is faster and less hassle than juggling various Docker containers and VMs. It protects me from dependency hell. Using Nix to manage an operating system (ie: NixOS) then gives me those benefits for my entire machine. Then I get even more benefits when using Nix on any other (not even necessarily NixOS) machine by pushing around package closures and managing a simple binary cache.<p>But overall: it makes me more productive. It is my secret weapon to manage the complexity of software development. The benefit is not on day 1, but on day 100 and day 1000.