So, containers do not get you reproducibility.

You absolutely do. If you build a container and publish it you will pull down that exact thing every time. How is that not “reproducibility”?

You no what though? Scratch that - who gives a fuck? Bit-for-bit reproducibility takes far more effort than it’s worth anyway. Even NixOS isn’t completely reproducible. It’s a false goal.

For dev environments, repeatable is okay.

It’s well more than good enough you mean.

If you want actually reproducible binaries that you can ship, Nix is better fit for that purpose.

Nobody really needs that.