I feel like it's actually not that hard... if you can tell what advice is bad and shouldn't be followed. Which I realize is a major catch-22 for new users.

My honest advice on Neovim (for everyone) is to do this:

• environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.neovim ];
• Configure Neovim as you usually would (hand-written init.lua, Lazyvim installer, whatever)
• Ignore/Disable Meson and use shell.nix to get language servers and formatters instead (alternatively: enable nix-ld for Meson or Mise)
• Completely ignore all the wrapper garbage like programs.neovim, nixvim, nvf, nixCats, and all the others

The last one is important. You can try all you want to make the garbage work and it eventually will, at least kinda, but IMHO the very idea of what they're trying to do is bad, ultimately making them a colossal waste of time.

I have less strong but overall similar feelings regarding Home Manager, those newly hyped wrapper managers and libraries, the "Dendritic Pattern", etc. The NixOS community loves coming up with novel ways to shoot themselves in the foot.