Example:

I say new finder window.
I pick "Desktop" from the favorites.
There's my desktop folder.
I wanna go one-level-up from that to see what's in my user folder.
I say View, show Path Bar.
Path bar shows me that I'm in:
Macintosh HD, Users, TonyFabris, Desktiop
I doubleclick on "TonyFabris" in the path bar and it moves me up one level to TonyFabris folder.

I DO NOT see "Library" there. That's where I was looking for it in the first place. So I go to the root directory and I see "Library" there so I assume that's the one they meant.

But later I press Shift-Swizzlestick-G and it opens up "go to folder" and I type "~/library" and it opens up a library folder full of interesting and useful stuff.

But the path bar says Macintosh HD, Users, TonyFabris, Libraray.

Dude I was just looking for library there. That's the first place I looked. I guess it must be a hidden folder.

I totally understand the need for OS's to have hidden folders. But the ten billion guides I found which, by their very nature, were all geared towards Windows users switching to mac, which told me to put this file in the "Library" folder, could have taken into account their audience and y'know, maybe mentioned that the folder was hidden and that this "~/" notation was shorthand for the user folder.