> Could I have done all that in a single shell, then had it automatically cleaned up when I was done? Yes, that is a pretty standard workflow for most nix user

> Could I have done all that in a single shell, then had it automatically cleaned up when I was done? Yes, that is a pretty standard workflow for most nix users. You either set up a shell.nix for your project with all of its dependencies, or if you need a certain tool once you just write for example: ‘nix shell -p iotop’ to enter a shell where iotop is in the path.