Is beginner mistakes worth the hype? [v1]

The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately.

Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land.