A list of things with a bad reputation that don't deserve it, in my opinion. Entirely subjective. Debate me.
Rust
The reputation: impossibly hard to learn, the borrow checker will break you, only for systems programmers who hate themselves. The reality: yes the learning curve is steep, but once it clicks it's genuinely one of the best programming experiences I've had. The compiler catches things that would be 3am production bugs in other languages. The ecosystem is modern and good. The difficulty is real but so is the payoff.
Self-hosting
The reputation: complicated, time-consuming, things break constantly, just use the cloud. The reality: the setup cost is front-loaded and after that it mostly just runs. You own your data, you control the infrastructure, and the understanding you build by managing it yourself is genuinely valuable. Yes things break occasionally. That's how you learn.
Reading documentation
The reputation: boring, dense, always out of date, skip it and just Google. The reality: good documentation is the fastest way to understand something properly. The Rust docs are excellent. The PostgreSQL docs are excellent. Arch Wiki is a masterpiece. Going to the source instead of a ten-year-old Stack Overflow answer frequently saves time overall even if it feels slower in the moment.
Typing in the dark
Late night working with the screen as the only light source. People act like this is terrible for you and deeply antisocial. It's actually a genuinely good working environment for certain kinds of work — quiet, focused, no visual distractions. I've done some of my best thinking in exactly that environment.
Home education
The reputation: isolating, unstructured, you'll fall behind, you need school for socialisation. The reality: when it works, it works extremely well. The ability to learn at your own pace, focus on what you're actually interested in, and work in an environment that suits you rather than one designed for the average of thirty different people — these are real advantages. Not for everyone. For some people, genuinely better.
Staying in
There is nothing wrong with preferring to be home. Some of the most productive and satisfying days I've had involved not going anywhere, working on something I cared about, and being somewhere quiet and comfortable. The social pressure to always be going out and doing things is real and mostly wrong.