I also teach sometimes and all this friction to get started just makes it harder to get into web development these days.
I learned very early on that if creating something in code means learning/entering cryptic code just to start (that is, before any work gets done), then you lose people very quickly. Inexperienced developers can easily express, "Hey if I click this button and a field has the word 'bubblegum', I want a popup to show", and likely can figure out the js necessary for it. But if you say, "Ok, before you write that javascript you have to configure a package.json and install all necessary pages, but also make sure your version of node is the correct version for our internal libs", their excitement to dive into a project is ruined.
I prefer those who are new to any webdev to get started by creating a simple CRUD, not with the grunt details like parsing a JSON body or what is this session stuff. Those IMHO should be optional optimization details to apply later on if you wish, but not mandatory for everyone.
Once you get used to them it's easy, but to get started it's a nightmare. I started with PHP back in the day, and even though it's hated around here the bar to getting started there is amazingly low in a good way.