I agree. If the OP was talking about mechanics, he could be saying: "I want to build a hotrod from scratch, but oh look so many little parts!".

I think that what many people fail to realize is that although the intended purpose seems simple enough, the tools to do it are sitting atop so many levels of abstractions that without prior knowledge you just have no way to figure where to start assembling the parts. The only way for a hobbist to manage that, would be with the right tools pre-assembled for some finite set of purposes that could guide most of the work.