Migrating from asdf to Nix has been an interesting journey. They both share some ideas when it comes to managing the build environment. However, Nix is several orders of magnitude more powerful than asdf.

If we only focus on Nix shells, Nix can not only manage the languages you use, but also every other tool you would need for your development process. You can use pure shells to check if your environment is complete, avoiding to use tools available globally on your machine. Also, if a tool or version is not available in nixpkgs, you can easily write your own derivations.

When it comes to environment switching, asdf seems to be a winner in the first run, but once you have set up direnv you quickly forget about that.

Generally speaking, Nix is a more broader tool: you can use it to install software on your machine without messing your system, manage your configuration or automate your builds. If you are interested in Nix, you should also learn about these aspects.

I still have to figure about using Nix as part of my Rust workflow. I have especially questions about the RLS setup and cargo commands like cargo watch. Once it is done, I may come with an article about it. I also plan to write a much shorter article focused on Elixir projects—including Phoenix and Nerves—as I have managed to build and run them in pure Nix shells.