You're describing staged learning -- and the example at the bottom of my OP is trying to demonstrate exactly that. My https://akkartik.name/post/wart-layers describes the mechanism in more detail for starting from a simple example and gradually adding concerns.
It's true that the very first example a student sees shouldn't be some eldritch horror in all its complexity.
It's also true that in the real world today, people study eldritch horrors on their own after learning the basics in kiddie pools.
But we can do better than the way we've always done it. For key pieces of software that have eaten the world, it seems worthwhile to gradually chip away steps on the cliff side to help future learners more easily understand the real-world complexity.
It's true that the very first example a student sees shouldn't be some eldritch horror in all its complexity.
It's also true that in the real world today, people study eldritch horrors on their own after learning the basics in kiddie pools.
But we can do better than the way we've always done it. For key pieces of software that have eaten the world, it seems worthwhile to gradually chip away steps on the cliff side to help future learners more easily understand the real-world complexity.