Link to Nixcademy lazy evaluation article

[mightyiam]

No description provided.

[hsjobeki]

After reviewing the full page, I have concerns about its suitability for nix.dev's recommended reading section.

The topic itself seems suited for the general nix language sections. Laziness is a language property, which can help to understand how other systems work. Not only module-system or overlays.

While technically correct and valuable, the article seems to have a marketing intention designed to drive course enrollment, not pure educational content, in contrast to all the other external links on nix.dev

The target page has multiple commercial interests:

• Large "Get Online Nix(OS) Classes" section with course promotion
• Newsletter signup forms ("Receive Monthly Nix(OS) Blog Digests")
• Multiple links to shop.nixcademy.com
• Certificate imagery and training package promotion

This is a new kind of external reference. Most of our current external references are purely educational.

While I appreciate the technical quality and Jacek's expertise, I recommend against merging this PR because the linked content is structured as a marketing funnel for commercial training services, which conflicts with nix.dev's mission to provide community-focused educational resources. I'd like to separate corporate concerns from community focused learning experiences.

This should be a political decision to stay neutral.

What do others think?

cc @djacu (@NixOS/marketing-team)

[mightyiam]

It's not a link to malware. Let people decide for themselves what amount of marketing they're willing to put up with in the content that they consume. Don't make this decision on their behalf. That's being neutral. That's my two cents.

[thilobillerbeck]

Second this. I think we have to make clear separations on corporate involvement and community content. While I certainly agree people should reflect on their consumed information, we should fill resources dedicated to clear communication inside the community with such content only.

Additionally, mixing in content from parties with a financial incentive without a upfront proposed rule-set (e.g. if someone gives the foundation x amount of money, they can do a blog post), then complaints will come up. Other companies will ask themselves: "hey, we can do that as well" and over time things will get more overloaded and harder to navigate.

It's great what Jacek is doing with his work and his involvement, but I just think documentation is not the right context to link to from.

[tfc]

This is a new kind of external reference. Most of our current external references are purely educational.

With all due respect:

• "Using Cachix you’ll never have to waste time building a derivation twice, and you’ll share built derivations with all your developers." direct advertisement of commercial nonfree cachix product
• "Cachix: Nix binary cache as a service" advertisement in the binary cache guide for nonfree commercial cachix product
• Alternatives to setting up distributed builds with 100% FOSS: nixbuild.net, hercules-ci.org, garnix.io direct advertisement of products that are all commercial and nonfree
• "Take a look at Arion, a docker-compose wrapper with first-class support for Nix." link to arion docs which are hosted by hercules-ci.org which directly advertise the commercial and nonfree hercules CI.
• Provisioning-over-SSH article links to disko repo which is hosted by nix-community but still directly advertises for commercial numtide company openly calling to action to contact them for commercial help
• "Experimental does not mean unstable (Graham Christensen, September 2023)" reference to determinate systems blog, commercial!
• It may be more convenient to use a software like Etcher to flash the image to your SD card if you are on a system where it’s available." reference to website that advertises to use the commercial balena platform with more text than actually describing ether on that page

My opinion is that these products and companies and the hard-working people behind them are great and provide value for the community with both their services and the free software & docs without forcing anyone to anything.

So does the free Nixcademy content.

If you reject this PR, please consider also removing those links. This is not fair.

[hsjobeki]

i might have viewed this to restrictive indeed. The problem is that the topic was never properly discussed afaik.

From my understanding most external links in nix.dev (apart from those to the nix and nixpkgs manuals) should not be here. If they contribute something substantial, a PR of the same content would add it to the version control and give the community maintainence control over it.

There is more effort involved to create a potentially bigger PR than adding a link. However accepting lots of those links, lead to documentation growing in blogs and other websites instead of in PRs to nix.dev.

I think this is actually okay to merge after normal review since we have so many commercial links in place already. I might create an issue to discuss pruning them later.

[mightyiam]

Thank you for looking into it, @hsjobeki. Is there anything I can do?

[hsjobeki]

I suggest removal of the second sentence. This doesn't really make sense here.

Add a dedicated chapter about laziness in the language section where it belongs, rather than front-loading this prerequisite claim in the reading list. Understanding Nixpkgs overlays and the module system requires understanding the language first, which is in https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language.html

[mightyiam]

I've struggled to understand what exactly I am asked to do. Here is my best guess, just pushed as an additional commit. Is this it, or was I supposed to keep some of that sentence? I read your suggestion about the addition of some chapter about laziness as what would be an ideal contribution with regards to this topic, but not as a practical request for this PR. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[hsjobeki]

Yes. I was describing the ideal solution. In case someone wants to make another PR, I'll add the remaining problems as issues after the holidays

[hsjobeki]

Approved from my side.

Removal is planned as soon as we have a native chapter about lazyness

[hsjobeki]

@mightyiam could you squash your two commits?

[tfc]

Removal is planned as soon as we have a native chapter about lazyness

[hsjobeki]

Removal is planned as soon as we have a native chapter about lazyness

I didn't intend to treat any external link differently. This is about the content that should be upstreamed which makes the link redundant. I want to get rid of all of the externals eventually, as mentioned.

Meme appreciated - please continue this discussion in the issue I created:
#1194