Daily thread: beginner mistakes (2026 edition) [v2]

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard.

For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. Been thinking about this for a while and curious what the community thinks. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right. This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks.