I mean, that's a distinction without a difference.
I've not written nix, but javascript is a ugly, terrible language. It would make sense that if nix derives from it (whyyyyyy) it would also be terrible.
I disagree with GP, itβs much more like Haskell than JavaScript. Function application is whitespace, functions can only have one argument, everything is an expression, let blocks are the way you define and scope variables. I see very little relation to JavaScript at all, to be honest.
I don't see any sense where syntactic sugar is not part of the language. I don't really care about how it works behind the scenes, the syntax is the part that I touch as a programmer.
I've not written nix, but javascript is a ugly, terrible language. It would make sense that if nix derives from it (whyyyyyy) it would also be terrible.