The worst tool for the job

Thanks to value engineering (gotta reduce BOM cost) a modern department store bike is probably substantially lighter than an equivalent "nice" children's bike from 30yr ago.

I have a similar rule of thumb for learning to code: never buy educational content (video, course, books) if you can't evaluate the value of that content by yourself. The outcome is learning a lot from free content (there is a lot of it out there for software development) until you know precisely what do you need to learn in more depth and which is the resource that has it.

The difference is that in software development educational resources, the cheapest ones are not necessarily the worst. There is almost no correlation between quality and price in most topics. So the phrasing would be more like "Start with the cheapest resource for the topic" (which most of the time means free).

I used this principle myself while learning to code and it worked out great. I could get a good first job as a frontend developer without buying any learning resource (freecodecamp.org + official documentation + posts/tutorials + stack overflow).

If you can't evaluate for yourself if something is worth buying, and have to trust another person of its value, you are not ready for that content yet.

I did this (unkowingly) with photography equipment. Didn't work out.

1. I started with a "nice" bridge camera - the Panasonic Lumix LX100. I liked shooting with it but I quickly hit its limitations and because I loved photography...

2. decided to go full-frame and I bought the Canon EOS RP. Now I'm completely overwhelmed with all the gear, the huge lenses, tripods etc. I definitely shoot less than with the Lumix, as now shooting requires much more ritual and forethought.

In hindsight I should have bought a Micro Four-Thirds interchangeable lens camera, as I was absolutely content with the quality of the Lumix, just wanted a "faster" system with better controls.

Rent the jackhammer, don't buy it. (Unless you actually need a jackhammer somewhat regularly.)

You can rent tools at Home Depot for considerably less than the cost of buying them. If you're only going to need them once, rent. (I did this with a hammer drill. It was absolutely worth it, just to punch four holes in concrete. But I've only needed to do that once, and I don't seem likely to need to do it again. So why buy?

Same thing with something like an RV. I can rent one for $1000, or I can buy one for $50,000. I've gone twice. I might have gone another time or two if I had one. At that point, the math for owning doesn't make sense. (But it feels different. Renting an RV feels like throwing money away, and buying feels like investing in an asset. It isn't rational, but that's how it feels to me.)

But if I were going to tour the country for a year, buying an RV might make a lot of sense. If you're going to use it, buy, and buy decent quality. (I don't want "the worst RV" for touring the country for a year.) If you're going to use it infrequently, rent. If you don't know if you're going to use it, rent a time or two, and find out if you're going to use it.

Yeah, got to agree with this article, and not just for the reason mentioned.

No, it's also because the best tool for an expert is often not the best tool for an amateur, and an overly expensive solution that works well for a pro can end up giving you terrible results when a newbie tries to use it. See for instance, Magento, which is perfectly good as an eCommerce solution for large companies with a full team of developers working on the site full time, but will probably be overkill for a small mom and pop business with one far less experienced guy doing the web deveopment side. Or high end audio/video production equipment, which will probably be way too sensitive/finicky for someone without much experience in the field.