Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks.
Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult. The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics – and they are mostly clever fools – seldom take the trouble to show you how easy the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.
Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficult, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.
Pretty sure that's Calculus Made Easy, a book which I, as a fool, certainly ought to recognize, and yeah, that's the gist of my approach to "scary" topics. "Have lots and lots of people done it? Then I'll likely be fine, because some of those people were assuredly at least as dumb as I am."
Anything that's been done by a lot of people, has been done well-enough by some stupid asshole.
I am a stupid asshole.
Therefore, I can probably figure out how to do [thing] well-enough, if it's been done by a lot of people.
It's worked out OK so far.