Completely agree on the complexity criticism, but this interactive tutorial (that literally embeds a full nix interpreter in the browser) went a looooooong way towards making Nix files not just look like arcane incantations to me, and doesn't take very long to do:
if at some point you realize "oh... this is just JSON with a different syntax, some shorthands, and anonymous or library functions," you're on the right path
https://nixcloud.io/tour/
if at some point you realize "oh... this is just JSON with a different syntax, some shorthands, and anonymous or library functions," you're on the right path