Until he actually had to use it.
Took 2 hours of reading through examples just to deploy the site.
Turns out, it is hard to do even just the bash stuff when you can't see the container.
Instead of using up time/$$ on github actions, you should try running the script locally to make sure everything works before commiting: https://github.com/nektos/act
Github CI still feels like an alpha project sometimes. Certain stacks look like they are supported, but it can be difficult to do the same thing as other CI tools (like GitLab/CircleCI/etc...) such as running things locally. Their tool will get you 95% of the way there. Other tools will also allow you to ssh into the box itself (Gitlab/Circleci) which is extremity useful when debugging scripts/processes.
My personal opinion is that github actions is a work in progress given the state of much of the community. GitLab has much better tools. But this is a great learning experience for sure. And more projects that use CI/CD the better!