I can agree with you and still be baffled by that response. Knowing the tech underlying a blog and saying using an SSG on a Raspberry Pi is simple are different things.
If you're capable of buying a VPS you're capable of sticking a USB cable and an Ethernet cable into something.
With VPS, you typically must know how to SSH and be able to find your way around the system entirely without a GUI (which could be jarring at first). Personally, when starting out, I was always anxious about messing something up so that it makes the server impossible to boot remotely.
Pi, meanwhile, is just another computer you physically have and can do all the normal things you do with a computer you physically have with. It has some hardware peculiarities, but then it’s also simpler to set up than building your own desktop (which, by the way, is another thing non-engineers routinely do).