You can just give the student an already existing example. Then there is no time wasted in configuring etc. Just tell him, leave this cruft aside (put a comment

You can just give the student an already existing example. Then there is no time wasted in configuring etc. Just tell him, leave this cruft aside (put a comment in the code to make it simpler), and only touch this function, and that function. This is not really too hard. And when the student becomes more curious, at some point, he might want to try to understand parts of the cruft.