In my case, when I was a Slackware user before Slackbuilds was created, sometimes I wanted to try out programs for which there was no package. Usually they required a .so file that was not installed and a workaround was to put it manually from a package of another distribution compiled for the same architecture. When the .so file was there, but on another path, a symbolic link was sufficient. The ldd command was a good friend.
Of course that was not the best and cleanest solution, having things outside the package management system bothered, but it was enough to experiment programs and I kept track of the changes so I could have the prior state of things. Later on, the Slackbuilds project eased the work and I contributed by writing code to automate the creation of a few packages. I learned a lot from these issues.
It doesn't seem to me, by the contrary. They're describing the harsh reality whether one likes it or not. As it's stated about reality in the Cambridge dictionary: "the state of things as they are, rather than as they are imagined to be". But it seems a good idea to rethink how we use the word "success", even if it's "success" at the eyes of many.
I like the story "The Honest Farmer", retold by Ella Lyman Cabot, I found in "The Moral Compass", pg. 262, edited by William J. Bennett, which introduces the story with this: "The dictionary defines integrity as 'an uncompromising adherence to a moral code' and says the word traces its origins to a Latin term meaning 'untouched'. Here is integrity, untouched and unshaken by altered circumstances."