Assuming you already have MySQL installed, adding a marginal wordpress site isn’t hard so much as it isn’t easy. This site is somewhat helpful.
Step I: plop down the wordpress bits wherever you want, and set up wp-config.php with the essential details of DB_USER and DB_PASSWORD. Thank goodness it’s php, so keeping those values in plaintext is completely safe. The super key detail is the DB_NAME of the new database which will be exclusively used for your new site. Of course make sure that you can load up index.php from those wordpress bits through some kind of webserver config.
Step 2: actually create that DB_NAME database in MySQL Workbench. I kinda thought wordpress would just make the db if it wasn’t there, but it actually throws an error. You need to make the db, but you don’t have to specify any details about it except its name (which should be the same as DB_NAME) and its charset encoding (probably a good idea to set this to the DB_CHARSET in yr wp-config.php, but obviously this is undocumented since MySQL has like eleventeenhundred utf-8 settings; I went with the default-iest of those and it seemed to be fine).
Step three: navigate to yoursite.domain/yourblog/wp-admin/install.php. This will prompt you for a username and password. This seems really unsecure until you consider that it tests your local db for a well-configured schema (given its version?) and only does anything if it hasn’t already been set up. So don’t do Step 2 and then not do Step three for hours or days because then some hacker might set up a blog on yoursite.domain and pretend to be you. Anyhow the rest is simple clicking and then your wordpress site will be generally accessible for reads but password protected for edits.
Step IV: rant insufferably.