Which is the better way to render ?

When I was searching for Java Game Development on Youtube. I saw 2 ways in which people were making games. One was loading images from files and drawing it on to the screen. And for movement they were changing the x and y. And some other people were getting the image and converting it to an array of pixels. And they had control over each and every pixels. The second way feels more complicated and better and the first way looks easy and good for beginners. What do you say ?