Yeah, for professional robotics you just accept that this is the world we live in. But for learning and hobbyist stuff, it's better to play with simple hardware and build the things that ROS is ultimately abstracting over before you try to pick up ROS.

I've seen people get sucked into ROS + simulation who end up never touching real robots. Which is fine if that's what you want to play with, but it's debatable if "ROS + sim" alone is even "robotics."

I usually recommend building the Arduino turtle-bot first, try the maze solver with the classic wavefront algorithm, and then a ROS Arduino setup tutorial.

Also not a fan of simulators for simple platforms, as a lot of stuff breaks when the environment is chaotic. =3