I mean it has variable names, configurations, documentation, a file extension and lots of code and a history behind it, so the strange thing to me is trying to suggest a replacement phrase as if you don't know what it is, acting like it's some high-brow language used in a blog to look smart, complaining about how this makes it less accessible (paraphrasing a little), then rolling back saying you dabbled in Nix and acting like you know what it is.
But then, you do you.
I geniunely thought you knew nothing about derivations and were criticizing the blogger for writing the term in their blog, not the term standard to Nix itself. Which is just as weird to me as complaining about std::string, well why call it a string? it is obviously text!
> Which is just as weird to me as complaining about std::string, well why call it a string? it is obviously text!
It's really not, though. String is a common technical term used in programming languages for many decades. If a new language decided to call them "textrons", _that_ would be weird. And this is the exact thing Nix did with "derivations", "flakes", etc. There is no precedent for these terms in other software, so they're unfamiliar even to its core audience.
It would be different if Nix invented an entirely new branch of technology that didn't have any known precedent. But for a reproducible build system that uses a declarative language? C'mon.
No need to resort to obvious straw man arguments, you can just accept some people dislike the dev UX of Nix and move on, which is basically what me and others have been trying to say in this entire sub-thread, some much more detailed than me.
No idea why you keep digging at this, the takeaway was clear at least three comments ago.
The part you seem to deliberately miss is that what is obvious to people deeply invested in Nix is not obvious to anyone else.
I for one can't trace the train of thought that is going from "intermediate build artifact" and somehow arrives at "derivation".
I found out just enough about Nix to reject it. My take is still informed, I simply didn't buy its pitch.