self-deploying-hello-universe VS KubeScript

Start? Your code path to production should be automated, so you should already have written lots of code to deploy your code (Terraform, Bash, GitHub workflow, or whatnot). I don't recommend the OPs' way, but another interesting take is Kelsey Hightower talk called "Hello Universe" (about a binary that can call the K8s API and deploy itself.) I can't find the talk, but here is the code: https://github.com/kelseyhightower/self-deploying-hello-universe

Right, you summarized it very well. For starters they learn Kustomize and use it without problems. But once the complexity reaches a threshold, like the ArgoCD helm chart, users will start feeling the pain of ad-hoc DSL, and try to find better alternatives. You're not alone. I built KubeScript after frustration of writing a bunch of kustomization files, and constantly jumping between hundreds of folders to dig into a specific patch.