I first started getting into programming using flash and actionscript. I think having a self-contained environment is incredibly important for beginners. When I

I first started getting into programming using flash and actionscript. I think having a self-contained environment is incredibly important for beginners. When I started trying to learn rails a few years later I got completely hung up on getting a dev environment up and running since I was new to unix-like environments, and I didn't come back to it for several more years. I can't imagine trying to get into front-end development as it is today with all its constantly shifting dependencies while also trying to learn how to code and how to stand up a server.