@civodul @janneke I think it has also a lot to do with your prior exposure to functional programming, I like to think that Nixlang is more a very simple barebone Haskell whereas Guix enjoys Lispy ecosystem.

Also, I think learning Guix or Nix is a very open-ended question :) — I suppose that people don't think of learning everything there is to learn but learning towards objective X. For example, not everyone has to learn about the bootstrap machinery of any tool they use.