I've been reading a ton of stuff online (here and elsewhere) with the goal of learning to mine bitcoin, on a small scale. It seems the only advice out there for a "small scale" miner is "DON'T DO IT!" Are all these people just trying to stop competition? I understand that running just one little ASIC isn't going to make me rich, and probably wont earn enough to cover electricity, but a person's gotta start somewhere.
The simple fact is that there are only 2 sensible reasons to mine Bitcoin -- to secure the blockchain and to make a profit. If you are dead set on mining Bitcoin regardless of its profitability and/or are willing to purchase at least 250 Ghs of SHA256 mining power in order to make an acceptable RoI, then you are correct that mining Bitcoin with whatever hardware that you have available on-hand is a first step that you would have to get through. However, if you are simply trying to learn about mining in general, then no, you don't "start somewhere" by mining Bitcoin.