I'm really glad somebody has written this. I think it makes essential points and does it with undisputable examples and a sense of humor. Bravo.
I agree with the javascript examples; I had an even worse experience trying to set up a LAMP stack back as a teenager. It was a perfect storm of new problems and vague errors (which .conf file on my hard drive represents what's running on port 80? Did I screw up permissions? Is there something wrong in my php.ini? Did I install php as a module or a library? All I get is a timeout...). Today I know all the exact commands to debug the setup, but I wasted so many hours back then blindly struggling with something that could have been explained in minutes by more experienced people / software.
I agree with the javascript examples; I had an even worse experience trying to set up a LAMP stack back as a teenager. It was a perfect storm of new problems and vague errors (which .conf file on my hard drive represents what's running on port 80? Did I screw up permissions? Is there something wrong in my php.ini? Did I install php as a module or a library? All I get is a timeout...). Today I know all the exact commands to debug the setup, but I wasted so many hours back then blindly struggling with something that could have been explained in minutes by more experienced people / software.