Add blog about moving to nix and update about me page

content/page/about.md

@@ -9,10 +9,10 @@ title = "About Me"
 
 I , [Salar Rahmanian](https://www.softinio.com), am a software developer based in San Francisco Bay area, California.
 
-I am married to my wonderful wife, [Leila Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/categories/leila-rahmanian/). We have two sons and a daughter, [Valentino Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/categories/valentino-rahmanian/) who was born in December 2013, [Caspian Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/categories/caspian-rahmanian/) who was born in December 2014 and [Persephone Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/) who was born in February 2017.
+I am married to my wonderful wife, [Leila Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/categories/leila-rahmanian/). We have two sons and a daughter, [Valentino Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/categories/valentino-rahmanian/) who was born in December 2013, [Caspian Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/categories/caspian-rahmanian/) who was born in December 2014 and [Persephone Rahmanian](https://www.rahmanian.xyz/categories/persephone-rahmanian/) who was born in February 2017.
 
 I have been developing software since the age of eleven. My current passion is
-to develop distributed systems using Scala, AKKA and Kafka. For everything else I love coding in Python.
+functional programming and distributed systems hence I like to spend my time with technologies like Haskell, Scala, AKKA and Kafka. For everything else I love coding in Python.
 
 ![Salar Rahmanian Family](/img/SalarRahmanianFamily.jpg)
 

content/post/moving-from-homebrew-to-nix-package-manager.md

@@ -0,0 +1,117 @@
++++
+title = "Moving from Homebrew to Nix Package Manager"
+date = 2019-02-16T18:30:40-07:00
+draft = false
+keywords = ["nix", "nixos", "macos", "macbook", "package manager", "functional programming"]
+description = "Moving from Homebrew to Nix Package manager on my macbook pro"
+tags = ["nix", "nixos", "macos", "functional programming"]
+categories = ["nix", "nixos", "macos", "macbook"]
+lastmod = 2019-02-16T18:30:40-07:00
++++
+
+![Nix](https://via.softinio.com/Screen-Shot-2019-02-17-13-04-16.png)
+
+As all my friends, colleagues and followers know I am very big on functional programming, so when I heard about nixOS and the nix package manager (A Purely Functional package manager) I really wanted to find out more about it.
+
+**Quote from** [Nix](https://nixos.org/nix/)
+
+> Nix is a powerful package manager for Linux and other Unix systems that makes package management reliable and reproducible. It provides atomic upgrades and rollbacks, side-by-side installation of multiple versions of a package, multi-user package management and easy setup of build environments.
+
+Finally this weekend I got the chance to dig in, find  out more about it and try my hand at it by moving from using [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/) as my preferred choice for package management to Nix.
+
+Note that this not a detailed tutorial on Nix as I will leave that to the Nix documentation (see: [References and Recommended Resources](https://www.softinio.com/post/moving-from-homebrew-to-nix-package-manager/#references-and-recommended-resources)), this is more of an account of how to get started with Nix fast  to be productive quickly whilst you learn all about Nix. 
+
+## Getting started with Nix
+The documentation for Nix is pretty detailed and extensive. Though I plan to read all of it, I wanted a quick overview of what I am getting myself into. To achieve that in timely fashion I read this fantastic overview [Adelblog - My journey into Nix](https://adelbertc.github.io/posts/2017-04-03-nix-journey.html) by  [Adelbert Chang](https://twitter.com/adelbertchang).  This blog left me super excited to carry on.
+
+### Lets Install Nix
+Nix gives you two installation  options: single user or multi-user.  Even though I am the only user of  my  macbook I decided to go with the multiuser option so that Nix will be the defacto source of truth for everything on the whole laptop. Even if I never create another user for my laptop my software developer OCD is better satisfied by the way everything will be organized, setup and used on my laptop. 
+
+To install open your terminal  and run:
+
+```bash
+sh <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon
+```
+Follow the on screen instructions and you will have Nix Package manager installed on your  macbook.
+### Installing Nix Darwin
+Nix Package manager is part of NixOS which is its own Linux based OS. With NixOS you can even configure your hardware and OS options using Nix . I was thinking to myself I wish I could do the same above just package management with MacOS. Luckily I found the Nix Darwin project  [nix-darwin](https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin)which is trying to achieve that for macbooks and macOS. So after a successful installation of Nix Package manager I set off installing Nix Darwin:
+#### Backup a few files first
+
+```bash
+sudo mv /etc/zprofile /etc/zprofile.orig
+sudo mv /etc/nix/nix.conf /etc/nix/nix.conf.orig
+sudo mv /etc/zshrc /etc/zshrc.orig
+```
+#### Install Nix Darwin
+
+```bash
+nix-build https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/archive/master.tar.gz -A installer
+./result/bin/darwin-installer
+```
+
+## Moving the packages I have with homebrew to Nix
+Once Nix and Nix-Darwin are installed you will have new configuration file here: `~/.nixpkgs/darwin-configuration.nix` 
+I followed the following steps to move my packages across:
+
+- run `brew list` to get a list of what  packages I have that was installed using homebrew
+
+    **tip:** If you want to see what each package  you have with homebrew depends on run this: 
+```bash
+brew list -1 | while read cask; do echo -ne "\x1B[1;34m $cask \x1B[0m"; brew uses $cask --installed | awk '{printf(" %s ", $0)}'; echo ""; done
+```
+- Check if package you want to move across exists in Nix:
+
+    ```bash
+    nix-env -qaP | grep -i <packagename>
+    ```
+    alternatively you can visit: [Search NixOS packages](https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html#)
+
+- Add your package to `~/.nixpkgs/darwin-configuration.nix` to the `environment.systemPackages` list (its space separated list).
+- Install the nix packages you added to your config file by running:
+
+    ```bash
+    darwin-rebuild switch
+    ```
+
+- Remove the packages you successfully moved by running:
+
+    ```bash
+    brew uninstall <packagename> --force
+    ```
+
+I started off by moving the packages one at a time , then in groups to completion. Last I run `brew cleanup`
+
+You can take a look at my configuration here: [Salar Rahmanian's darwin-configuration.nix](https://github.com/softinio/dotfiles/blob/master/nix/darwin-configuration.nix)
+
+## Useful Aliases in my zsh profile
+
+I added the following to my `.zshrc` profile to make it easier for me to use
+nix:
+
+```
+alias nixre="darwin-rebuild switch"
+alias nixgc="nix-collect-garbage -d"
+alias nixq="nix-env -qaP"
+alias nixupgrade="sudo -i sh -c 'nix-channel --update && nix-env -iA nixpkgs.nix && launchctl remove org.nixos.nix-daemon && launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist'"
+alias nixup="nix-env -u"
+alias nixcfg="nvim ~/.nixpkgs/darwin-configuration.nix"
+```
+
+## What am I doing next?
+This certainly has got me started with Nix and have me excited to use it more as much as possible so next I am looking at:
+
+- Moving my neovim/vim configuration to using Nix.
+- Learn and move my development workflow to using Nix shell. I currently develop using Scala, Haskell and Python I would love to hear from everyone on what tools you are using and what your workflow is
+- Create some nix packages for anything I notice missing
+
+Of course I will share all my learnings here on my blog so keep an eye on my blog or follow me on Twitter.
+
+## References and Recommended Resources
+- [Nix package manager manual](https://nixos.org/nix/manual/)
+- [nix-darwin: nix modules for darwin](https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin)
+- [Search NixOS packages](https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html#)
+- [How up to date are NixOS channels?](https://howoldis.herokuapp.com/)
+- [Adelblog - My journey into Nix](https://adelbertc.github.io/posts/2017-04-03-nix-journey.html)
+- [Nix Pills](https://nixos.org/nixos/nix-pills/)
+- [Salar Rahmanian dotfiles](https://github.com/softinio/dotfiles)
+- [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/)