the “Nix store” is independent of the “Nix language” (which we’ll define below). In other words, you could replace the front-end Nix programming language with another language (e.g. #Guile scheme, as #Guix does). This is because the Nix derivation format (the .drv files) and the nix-store command-line interface are both agnostic of the Nix expression language.
In isolation, the Nix language is “just” a purely functional programming language with simple language constructs.
Nixpkgs support for overrides is essentially an embedded domain-specific language, meaning that you still express everything in the Nix language (layer 1), but the ways in which you express things is fundamentally different than if you were simply using low-level Nix language features.
OS is based on the NixOS module system, which is yet another embedded domain-specific language. In other words, you configure #NixOS with Nix code, but the idioms of that Nix code depart even more wildly from straightforward “layer 1” Nix code https://www.haskellforall.com/2022/08/stop-calling-everything-nix.html?m=1
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