> The acme client doesn’t have to run on the servers itself.

This is really important to understand if you care about either: Actually engineering security at some scale or knowing what's actually going on in order to model it properly in your head.

If you just want to make a web site so you can put up a blog about your new kitten, any of the tools is fine, you don't care, click click click, done.

For somebody like Rachel or many HN readers, knowing enough of the technology to understand that the ACME client needn't run on your web servers is crucial. It also means you know that when some particular client you're evaluating needs to run on the web server that it's a limitation of that client not of the protocol - birds can't all fly, but flying is totally one of the options for birds, we should try an eagle not an emu if we want flying.