I would argue it is not that much harder to do things correctly as opposed to doing things fast and loose. It just requires reading a few books and learning a tool like ansible. It is extremely boring, but the time pays for itself.

I suspect this is a case of inexperience as opposed to someone casting off established wisdom ( you should be able to rebuil your project, be constantly testing to ensure you can, enable automated backups for all servers )

Read the stardew valley chapter in "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels".

Turned out great, but it was harrowing for a while.