with ansible, you are responsible for making sure that executing the described steps in the described order leads to the desired result
with nix, you describe what you want your system to look like, and then figuring out how to get there is nix’s problem (or rather, is obvious to nix thanks to nixpkgs)
NixOS sounds like ansible in OS form and that has never seemed appealing. Happy to hear why my impression is wrong though!
Think about it like this:
with ansible, you are responsible for making sure that executing the described steps in the described order leads to the desired result
with nix, you describe what you want your system to look like, and then figuring out how to get there is nix’s problem (or rather, is obvious to nix thanks to nixpkgs)
Thanks for explaining
Ansible is idempotent with a lot of intent. NixOS is idempotent.