Self hosting is not just one thing. You are system adminstrator, network engineer, security specialist, service architect and many other things, specially if you expose anything to anyone outside your very private network. And to get anything even running on that complex mess requires some knowledge on a lot of things. Making them run securely with proper backups requires even more knowledge on things.

Sure, you can just throw some docker images on your old desktop and be happy, even forward ports from the public internet to your things if you like. But that exposes your stuff to quite a lot of dangers and if you just click buttons without any understanding you’ll soon be a part of a botnet or lose your data or lose money if someone decides to mess around with your home automation or something else.

I get what you’re saying, not all of us are very polite and answers can be pretty harsh, but more often than not the generic idea behind those answers is not trying to be an asshole or gatekeep anything. It’s just that there’s a skillset you need to build things safely and if it’s clear from the start that someone looking for answers is way over their head it’s better for everyone to get them take a step back and learn instead of trying to create a meaningful answer since there’s too many variables or it’d just take immense effort to write down comprehensive guide on what to do, why and how for everything from the ground up.

I know for a fact that in my area there’s a bunch of surveillance cameras, home automation stuff and even some farm equipment directly open to the public network just because someone just plugged things in without any idea on the whole picture. Sometimes the correct answer is ‘stop shooting yourself on the foot and learn the basics first, then come back’.