I'm no fan of Java EE, but a "hello, world" Rails app would have a similarly complicated walkthrough if "rails new" made you choose which subsystems to include,

I'm no fan of Java EE, but a "hello, world" Rails app would have a similarly complicated walkthrough if "rails new" made you choose which subsystems to include, and the tutorial described what each choice meant. (And if it also covered setting up and configuring the author's editor of choice.) Just about any software development environmment (including JS in a web browser) is ferociously complex by the standards of, say, the 1980s. The messiness of a "getting started" guide for an app framework has more to do with the quality of the packaging than anything else.