He looks very polite.

100%

I got the sense nix has a reputation and might be too complex for me as a casual user. I've had a good experience with devbox so far, although it's probably lacking some stuff nix has. www.jetify.com/devbox

This is great advice. There's a voice in the back of my head telling me to worry about getting boxed-in to a solution by doing this though. Should there be a balance between a directly-solve-the-problem implementation and a more general solution that might be adapted to fit other situations?

@davefarley77.bsky.social and @jezhumble.net's Continuous Delivery book is an excellent resource for the "how" of frequent, small changes.