I kind of get that person's point (although I don't quite understand the tone...). I introduced my wife to LaTeX when she started her PhD because she had very specific typesetting needs like phonetic alphabet and arrows on top of words to indicate intonation. She discovered a wonderful world! But none of that could have been possible if she had had to install a LaTeX distribution and an editor on Windows .
Overleaf (and previously Sharelatex) on the other end makes everything easy. You have the choice between XeLateX, PDFLaTeX, etc., all the useful packages you could dream of, and more, without installing anything. Plus collaborative editing for free, when she needs help with a macro or a new environment definition.
So, yeah, being able to program without having to install a development environment is great. There are tools to do that already, like Repl.it, maybe the OP could try that.
Overleaf (and previously Sharelatex) on the other end makes everything easy. You have the choice between XeLateX, PDFLaTeX, etc., all the useful packages you could dream of, and more, without installing anything. Plus collaborative editing for free, when she needs help with a macro or a new environment definition.
So, yeah, being able to program without having to install a development environment is great. There are tools to do that already, like Repl.it, maybe the OP could try that.