The worst tool for the job | Hacker News Reader

The worst tool for the job

johndcook.com

221 pointsColinWright191 comments

What a great principle. One of those things I've felt for a long time but never express so well as John did.

This idea extends to many other things, like... sports equipment. Beginner runners/bikers/skateboarders/whatever will not really feel the difference between equipment that cost $100 and $1,000, so get the cheap one and use it to (its) death. If you're still into the sport by then, go ahead and get the nicer one. You'll actually appreciate the difference then and be happier, and also know that you'll actually make good use of it.

Another interesting way to put it: Minimum Viable Tool.

I found a pretty big difference between a $20 tennis racket and a $60 racket. For one thing, any tennis racket is going to get loose if you play with it long enough. It cost more than $20 to redo the strings on a $20 tennis racket and $20 racket is going to send balls in totally the wrong direction in the next season.

Sure but you have to use it long enough for the stings to get loose. What percentage of tennis racket purchases are used more than once?

A high one? All of the tennis rackets I've seen are used until they are torn, broken, and been repaired multiple times (at least the cords). True I'm from Spain, but it's rare that rackets are used only once.

You probably don't see the ones that aren't used. They're stuck in storage in people's houses.

I guess the point is that if you find redoing the strings of your $20 racket more than once or twice, it means you're really using it and that warrants buying the expensive one.

The idea is to avoid buying the expensive racket before you even know if you'll like playing tennis at all.

Also the other half of the article's premise: you've return out the cheap racket. This means you are really using the thing, do don't just buy a better one but but a great one. Don't waste money working your way through mid-tier equipment first

But you already know this, so you've probably played for a while.

I think the meaning is if you start playing tennis, use the 20$ one. Then if you manage to wear it out, buy a good one. You shouldn't buy a 2nd 20$ one, ever.

I use a similar heuristic that I’ve dubbed the 90% rule. In many cases, you can buy something that is 90% as good as the best product available for two thirds or even half the cost.

If you want the very best, though, you have to pay through the nose. Ergo, you should always try the cheaper product first.

You may have independently formulated the Pareto principle. The idea that you can get 80% of the theoretical max value for about 20% of the cost, but the next 20% of value requires 400% additional (the "missing 80%") cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Came here to say this. I've recently bought the cheapest bicycle and stand-up paddleboard I could find, precisely because of that reason. I don't know if the hobbies will "stick". Can always invest more later.

If you have the money, why waste it on low quality goods that will break? Buy better stuff instead and sell it or give it away when you find you don't use it anymore!

Quality, mid range equipment. Not luxury.

(The examples are unfortunate. For a runner it might suffice with $100 worth of equipment but not for a cyclist.)

>If you have the money, why waste it on low quality goods that will break?

Because oftentimes (depending on the type of product) they don't actually break, they're just slightly less luxurious to use.

Sometimes you don't know what the minimum viable is because you are a beginner and don't know yourself well in that field.

For example, I started running with shoes that were somewhat fine for beginners when I would double-check online, but happened to have limitations that affected people who practice a lot, or people who don't practice properly, or in my case undiagnosed issues (hypermobility of the knee). In my case getting those shoes with too much shock absorption was actually dangerous because it prevented the feedback loop of auto-correction from being built. This led to some habits that I didn't notice were bad and later on led to a pain in my knee that has, despite my best efforts and much rest over the last 8 years, entirely prevented me from the freedom of running.

Another example I've encountered is with the guitar: the first one I picked up was this entry-entry-level thing that was viable for my budget but hindered my interest in practice because I didn't just encounter the physical pain you encounter when learning the guitar, but also the pain you get from badly adjusted guitars with high action and uneven frets and fairly crappy wood. I gave up on it a few times. But I eventually tried again and made the hypothesis that the hindrance was the guitar, and after testing that hypothesis I committed to buying a better one which enabled me to actually learn things that flat out seemed impossible on a crappy piece of wood. Years later, I'm far away from all my good guitars and I buy this entry-level thing because I miss playing.. and it's been hanging there mostly untouched because of how bad it just feels.

I think it's much smarter to spend some time testing out things with other people's help and to borrow stuff for a while whenever possible, but on average to commit to something above entry-level if you're trying to be serious about anything. You'll save yourself a decent amount of time, you can give yourself a progress curve that looks much smoother, and when comes the time to truly upgrade you'll have something solid to use as a base to look at higher quality tools.

edit: notwithstanding the fact that in many cases you have zero resell-value for physical tools that are entry-level, while something average will at least go for a reasonable percentage of the original price

>In my case getting those shoes with too much shock absorption was actually dangerous because it prevented the feedback loop of auto-correction from being built. This led to some habits that I didn't notice were bad and later on led to a pain in my knee that has, despite my best efforts and much rest over the last 8 years, entirely prevented me from the freedom of running.

It seems like you're drawing a direct causal relationship to what is a very complex chain of events over a long period of time. How can you be sure the problems would not have arisen regardless of what tool (shoe) you originally bought?

I can't be sure it wouldn't have arisen, but it has indeed been confirmed to me more than once (kinesiologist, physiotherapist) that the shoes had been problematic because they led to wrong posture correction and that led to a transfer of energy (post absorption) to the wrong places. There is more than one way to that things could have been better, for example I could have strengthened my muscles on either side of the knee to hold it in place or I could have practiced the correct posture without shoes, but ultimately the shoes were both a major part of the problem and also the only thing that I, as a beginner, was able to focus on and do something about.. until it was a bit too late, and I was going to clinics to figure out why that pain was present. Which is kind of my point: as a beginner you're not knowing yourself or the field well enough to know better.

> Sometimes you don't know what the minimum viable is because you are a beginner and don't know yourself well in that field.

+1.

Although the saying is "a bad workman always blames his tools", but I often heard the notion that a beginner should be trained using tools and equipment of decent quality, so it doesn't mislead the beginner or interfere with the learning process. After one has mastered the skill, one may choose something worse later on if budget is an issue. At this point, the limitation of the tool is more tolerable, since you already know how a task is supposed to be done properly, you only need to overcome the deviations.

Of course, this strategy is more suitable to the trainer than the trainee - it can only save money for you when you are trained at workplaces or institutions, where you don't need to pay for the equipment...

Hey, just as a long-term advanced guitarist, you should look into getting a professional fret-job/setup for your cheapo guitar first rather than buying a higher end model. You'll save a significant amount of cash that way even if it's a couple hundred dollars to get a quality setup from a good tech.

Or if you're really dedicated to saving money, you can always pick up the almost entirely separate hobby of doing guitar setups yourself, but that's probably not worth it at your current stage, based on how you've described yourself.

Thanks for the advice. I'm far from being a good guitarist but I've been playing for over 15 years now so thankfully I've managed to learn a thing or two about at least the minor improvements that can change a lot of things, so I've adjusted the action myself as well as any problematic fret (thankfully there weren't too many - it's easy to overdo any adjustment when it compounds..)

In the case of this guitar though, it was really the cheapest thing out there because I am on a budget (and a really tight one), so any real work done on it would cost more than a few times the guitar itself and more than I can afford to dedicate to it. My actual guitars are an ocean away for the time being, but I'll still get them back eventually. In the meantime I have a nice decorative thingy I can pick up sometimes, and I try to remind myself that now that I'm "more experienced" I should take this as a challenge rather than an excuse.

Upvoted because I was going to mention the guitar as an example. High action makes it very difficult for beginners to get a decent sound – particularly if they’re trying to change chords while keeping time. The learning curve for guitar is already steep enough and a cheap guitar could easily put off a beginner and lead them to believe that they are not cut out for playing the instrument.

I’d also add sporting equipment such as mountain bikes to the list. A bike that is marketed as a “mountain bike” may be fine for cycling on paved surfaces but not be entry-level for actual mountain-biking, i.e., be very unpleasant – or downright dangerous – for off-road cycling.

My strategy for starting new hobbies is to research as much as possible, talk to friends who are already past the beginner stage and – if possible – borrow equipment from those friends. After that, try to buy second-hand. Whether or not you keep up the hobby, you can sell on the original equipment. And if you decide to keep with it, you have a better idea of what you want/need when upgrading.

I had a similar experience learning the piano when I was a kid. Understandably, my parents started me out with a cheap $100 electric keyboard, which was good enough for the first year or so of practice. As I improved, though, it became a big hindrance to my progress, as 1) the keys were unweighted, 2) the speakers couldn't accurately produce high/low notes, and 3) the keys were slightly smaller than the standard size. Practicing at home was too different from the real piano I used a lessons, so I started to feel really discouraged.

I was too young to understand quite what the problem was, or to save up enough money on my own to upgrade, so I ended up quitting lessons altogether.

This seems like a vote to follow the advice of the post (as does the comment you replied to). You bought the cheap one first, but you didn’t buy the upgrade when it made sense.

Exactly! Unfortunately as a small child it was out of my hands :(

It sounds like you're the type of person to blame external factors for your own issues. Nothing you're saying counters the original advice.

Additionally, in the guitar example, you learned how to play and learned what it meant to own a decent guitar. Then, when presented with the opportunity to buy a new guitar: bought a crappy one, ignoring everything you had already learned about the instrument.

Given that you were so easily discouraged from learning the guitar, it's also equally likely that it wasn't something you were truly passionate about and gave yourself an excuse at every turn as to why you weren't progressing.

> Nothing you're saying counters the original advice.

The original advice was to buy the cheapest thing and just use it. GP's advice was "Sometimes you don't know what the minimum viable is because you are a beginner and don't know yourself well in that field."

GP then gave specific examples of cheap products that aren't particularly suitable for beginners: (1) cheap running shoes that lead to bad habits and possible injuries and (2) cheap guitars that are difficult to play. For both examples, he described how as a beginner he lacked the experience to know what he needed.

It's also related to the 'rule of least power': Choose the least powerful computer language suitable for a given purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_power

> You'll actually appreciate the difference then and be happier, and also know that you'll actually make good use of it.

This also reflected my journey into watercolor painting. One day I bought a bunch of cheap watercolor paper and paints. I was able to just blow through those materials by lots of experimentation as I didn't have any fear of "wasting" the good paper and good paints. Only afterwards did I get a better understanding of why the more expensive paper and paints are worth the cost (e.g. better absorption of water by the paper, more vibrant pigments that mix together better).

There's value in learning about the range of tool quality through the journey, as it will help create your own criterion for judging the quality of tools rather than assuming, say, that the cost of a tool is proportional to its quality.

Disagree. I gave up on so many sports cause of faulty uncomfortable equipment.

As child we had such shitty swim goggles that they would leak badly. For 10 years I swam without them and kept my eyes hurting eventually couldn’t take it and quit cause of eye pain. As adult with money bought a nice pair for $20 and realized not all goggles leak.

I don't think anybody is advocating for using crappy tools for 10 years, especially when a better option is available for just $20.

That’s the most extreme example. I also stopped roller blading because the mid tier blades hurt. Or 20 year old cross country sky’s are bad. I think you should buy the best equipment you can afford. Sell if at loss if you don’t stick to it.

well, if you apply the principle in the article, if they leaked badly, they would be regarded as inadequate, so you'd swap them with the best you could afford.

Nothing wrong with goggles. A child's face is just too small

An example where this really doesn't apply is bicycles. When you're trying to get a child to learn to ride a bike, if you get a cheap steel bike from a big box store, it will be twice as heavy as it needs to be and can make the activity itself so difficult and unpleasant that the child decides they don't enjoy the activity.

I'd question a kid who couldn't stand to learn to ride a department store bike.

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 learned to ride on the crappiest banana seat schwimm with a dynamo powering a heavy head-light. I love it. I graduated to a Rampar BMX and then a Rebel top top components including KKT pedals and and Oakley 0.5 grips. Man years later I got a Fuji Aluminum Road entry level bike for my teenager son and he rode it for a few months and tossed it. Not interested. It was a great entry level bike. I believe on the evolution of the rider, from a Huffy Wal-Mart to a Bianchi or Giant.

I have to disagree. I guess cheap is relative to your economic standing. We and I am purposely using we because there were about six of us learning to ride on two bicycles. All kids on the street. Both had no breaks, after too many punctures we used a thick hosepipe in place of a tube. Hosepipe made for very bumpy and rather heavy bike. As an adult I was in a better financial position and bought my daughter the cheapest bike to learn on. It's been six months now and she is riding just fine.

The problem with this is that we live in a world where there are versions of things so cheap is to be unusable. you don't need a top-of-the-line skateboard to learn how to skate, but it's much harder to learn on a Walmart board, if not impossible. Bearings that don't roll, wheels that get flat spots, decks that are made of particle board and have no pop and l plastic bushings are all a huge impediment to doing the most basic parts of skating.

You can extend this to guitars, too.

On the cheapest models, the "action" (distance between strings and fretboard) is so long that only the most precise master of the craft can hope to play anything.

True, although action is not a hard fix as it requires a file. It's a same more cheap guitars don't use zero frets, as they eliminate this problem.

> Beginner runners/bikers/skateboarders/whatever will not really feel the difference between equipment that cost $100 and $1,000, so get the cheap one and use it to (its) death.

Back when I used to go to mountain bike races, I noticed that you could roughly divide the people who rode $6000 bikes into two groups: Novices, who had no need for such a bike, and professionals, who get all their equipment from sponsors.

The take away for me was that it never actually makes any practical sense to buy high-end equipment for myself.

(Granted, I'm not self-employed.)

There is a problem with buying the most expensive tool.

2nd or 3rd most expensive can be just as good if not better than the most expensive.

Quite a bit of research might be required. (Speakers, Laptops, Bikes, Watches it applies to most consumer goods)

It is like that joke about two rich people comparing the same tie:

How much was that tie? - $500

You fool, you should have gone to the store across the street it is $1000 there!

src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_jokes#New_Russians

This principle also doesn’t work well for things that have practically no ceiling to their cost, like clothing, cars, and furniture.

Tried this with a bunch of sports, but the change was most obvious in skiing. Used to rent, when I bought my first pair of boots, I went from a literal "Beginner" to "Intermediate". Balance and coordination went up 5X.

I used to have a friend who did a bit of contractor work, and he swore up and down by Sears “Craftsman” tools; not because they were the best (they were far from it), but because they had the best warranties. Every tool, he claimed, would wear out sooner or later, and Sears would always replace with a brand new one, no questions asked.

I think there's some kind of point to be made here about broken economies and waste, but anyway it's a story that stuck with me.

Sears eventually decided that not enough people returned the tools, and eventually started selling low-quality Craftsman products. I bought a water wand for spraying the yard and dog (mainly the dog, he really loved biting the spray), and had to return it 10 times for a replacement over the course of two years. Thing kept breaking in the metal rod. Then they had to give me a different design, got another 10 replacements that consistently broke below the handgrip. Eventually the store down the block from me closed, and Sears sold the Craftsman brand while it still had value.

> Beginner runners/bikers/skateboarders/whatever will not really feel the difference between equipment that cost $100 and $1,000

As a general rule I disagree. If beginners don't feel the difference, that's because they only used the $100 equipment, they would be better off with the $1000 one.

I first noticed that with skis. I am not a great skier by any mean, but just for kicks I tried renting the best equipment I could find and wow, what a difference it made. Everything was so much more precise. Obviously, I made many mistakes, but the outcome became clearer and more repeatable. I knew how I was wrong and it helped me improve. Poor quality equipment muddy things up, so it might feel like it is more forgiving (more on that later) but in reality, its just blends its own shortcoming with yours so you never know what went wrong, especially if you are a beginner and can't trust your own skills.

There are good reasons for not buying expensive equipment right away. The biggest one is simply that if you don't know if it is the right thing for you, you may spend a lot of money for nothing, that's why some people recommend renting first. The other is that high-end stuff tend to be less forgiving, because they are marketed to experts. It is not that beginners won't enjoy that level of quality, but for the previous reason, there isn't a market for it.

> I first noticed that with skis. I am not a great skier by any mean, but just for kicks I tried renting the best equipment I could find and wow, what a difference it made

I had the exact same comment. Luckily with skiing you can often try hire skis for a day rather than committing to purchasing expensive kit. You may also benefit from advances in ski tech rather than being locked in for years to an expensive early purchase. This happened to me when carving skis replaced the long straight and stiff skis that were prevalent when I started.

Ski boots, however, are a different story, especially if you have non-standard feet (e.g. flat arches, wide toes, etc). After a couple of painful early holidays with ill-fitting boots, often selected quickly in a busy hire shop, I purchased a reasonably expensive pair with a customised fit and the difference in comfort was astounding. In practical terms I could ski 'til the end of the day without getting painful feet.

Ping pong is also interesting. Expensive paddles have sticky rubber that can help experienced players control the spin on a ball. Cheap paddles don't have much grip. Very cheap paddles, the hard ones with short pips and no sponge, have virtually no grip.

Grip and imparting spin are important for letting you control the ball, but it's also a double edged sword. It's easy to get someone who doesn't know how to counteract spin to hit the ball into the net or miss the table entirely if their paddle has some grip. Inexperienced players are thus often better off with the cheap paddles -- they don't know how to use it to their advantage, so they're better off being immune to its effects.

That reminds me of the "expert beginner" posted and discussed on HackerNews not too long ago: https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th... That is, cheap equipment can be a local optima that players can get stuck in.

Disclaimer: I'm a novice.

skateboarding is a very bad example here - there is a noticeable difference in the quality/bearings of a "beginner" equipment that comes from Walmart/Target that costs ~60, and a proper setup from a skateboard shop that costs ~120.

The beginner equipment is more likely to get you hurt by breaking, and the bearings will be very very slow.

For other sports, running/biking/skiing/etc I think this difference is not as pronounced.

It’s odd that you would end by assuming that other sports don’t suffer from the same problem. If you buy crappy shoes and run in them for extended periods you will hurt your feet and knees. If you try to bike harder than commuting on a cheap bike you’ll hurt yourself when the brake pads come loose. No idea about skiing but someone in this thread said they felt a noticeable difference, I’m not sure if it translates into safety though.

This is harder than it sounds because the bottom of the market is often well below a minimum viable level, to the point that you're actively making learning harder for yourself if you go there. You might not feel the difference between $100 and $1000 shoes, but Walmart has $15 shoes which are probably bad enough they make it harder to start running and learn proper technique.

I've experienced this pretty directly with skis. If you get the cheapest boots and skis you can, you'll find it harder to learn, to the point where your feet hurt at the end of the day. I pretty much associated skiing with pain until I got decent equipment. There is a level above which it isn't worth spending as a beginner, but it's a level that looks high to people on the outside.

These days, I don't look for the cheapest tool I can find, I look for the cheapest tool people seriously use—which is often 5–10 times more expensive than the cheapest option. I've had enough experiences in the past sabotaging my own progression with awful tools that I know it's not worth it.

You literally felt the pain though. And could appreciate the more expensive gear. But I agree with your point. In cross country skieing its much more fun if you have better gear. Some sports and professions is just gear dependent. You won't win a rally with a slow car.

It’s not just feeling the difference, it’s preventing injury and allowing yourself to progress at a speed which keeps you interested at all. I only finally started running regularly after years of trying and failing after buying proper shoes. The difference was immediate.

What made you keep trying running even though you failed multiple times at it? And had you failed even with excellent running shoes, would you have even kept trying? (Maybe you would have thought: "Well, I already have the best shoes. If I still can't get good, maybe I should give up forever.")

Well, I was always fundamentally motivated by wanting to be able to run for the health benefits, but that motivation was tempered by lack of progress. If I hadn't changed shoes I might have given up eventually.

I think this is kind of missing the "if it's inadequate" clause of the heuristic. In your example, the painful boots were clearly inadequate, and by the heuristic, it was time to upgrade to the best equipment you could afford ;)

Skiing does make for some examples of a couple weaknesses in the heuristic, though:

First the "best equipment you can afford" part is pretty poorly defined. Suitability of ski equipment is contingent on the skill of the skier and the type of skiing, so you can't just pick the most expensive thing and expect it to be the best for you. Skis are especially nasty in this regard in that the most expensive equipment often makes performance trade-offs that are actively hostile to beginners or use in the wrong conditions.

Additionally, ski equipment is consumable (at least in the hands of an aggressive skiier), which largely invalidates the cost-optimization rationale of the heuristic.

Skiing probably wants a somewhat modified heuristic, along the lines of "Start with the cheapest tool, use it until it wears our or you find an intolerable problem, and then choose a replacement that solves the problems with the previous iteration."

> I think this is kind of missing the "if it's inadequate" clause of the heuristic.

I feel like you're running into an issue a lot of rules of thumb have, where there are words that provide plenty enough wiggle room that the heuristic is accurate... but if you know enough to know how they should be wiggled then you don't need the heuristic.

True for bicycles too. The gears get bent by the chain, the tires pop at normal pressure, the brakes don’t stop the bike. Buying the cheapest bike from a reputable bike shop is much better than buying one from Walmart.

This is the example I was thinking of. Target and Walmart bikes are literally toys (not even pejoratively), that won’t hold up well to regular exercise or commuting, but then real entry level bikes are 500 - $700. Tools from Home Depot are a little better because most people don’t use them to build houses so will never notice a hammer that doesn’t perform well.

While true of plastic, no edge, snowboards it does hold true to a point. Rentals of middling quality and some instruction go a long way to get a rough feel for something before dropping top dollar.

Same with mountain biking.

If someone starts riding trails on the cheapest, or near cheapest option, they're going to at best have a bad enough time to be dissuaded from doing it, and at worst actually end up hurting/endangering themselves or others.

Not to say you need to run out and buy the most expensive bike one can, but there's certainly a balance to be had.

Buying the cheapest tool can also easily discourage newcomers to a field.

As an example, I was nearly completely discourage from learning the guitar by the first guitar I bought. It was a really cheap stratocaster clone (<100$) with a really bad amp.

The thing was so bad that playing it was uncomfortable, and it was not even able to stay tuned thanks to the crappy machine heads.

Looking back, I would have been better off buying a decent guitar from the get go, something in the range of 200$ would have ensure that (brands like Ibanez or Cort are able to produce quite decent guitars in this price range, even Squier (Fender low price brand) could be decent enough).

The point is to at least invest a little, usually avoiding the absolute lower price items, but targeting items one level above.

Walmart has their own SKUs. A lawnmower at Walmart is an entirely different product than one sold at any other store with the exact same name and company. They will work with the manufacturers to cheapen their products as much as possible.

It's like the tool already was the minimum viable level, then Walmart stepped in.

I won't buy anything with a motor in it from harbor freight either.

Another option for sport equipment is to rent before you buy. You can rent skis and boots for a week for less than a cheap kit, learn, and then choose to invest. More difficult with some items (shoes), though.

I had a homework problem in some math class about the optimal online algorithm for deciding when to rent vs. buy. It works out to "rent until you've spent as much as you would spend to buy, then buy," and I think that applies well here. You may spend up to double the cost, but you avoid spending _a lot more_ on incremental upgrades before getting gear that actually fits your needs.

An example for me is soldering irons. I bought a crappy $5 weller and used it for some time, and I never enjoyed soldering. When I used a nice one, everything changed. I bought a $100 iron and now I enjoy it quite a bit, and I feel like my electronics skills have suffered because I could have been a lot more enthusiastic about soldering if it wasn't always such a chore.

I see this done a lot with headphones.

Sennheiser HD600 cost around $280, are comfortable, do sound really accurate and pleasant, effectively last forever, are full modular with all pieces sold individually in the odd event the user drops them from a building or steps on them, and are effectively the market peak in value/price.

But people keep buying uncomfortable foul-sounding sub-$100 headphones that last a few months at best.

Or they can buy Sony MDR 7506 for about $100, and they will sound ok and last 20+ years. At least mine have, and only the ear cushions have needed replacement.

I get more joy finding and using durable, decently performing products that provide excellent value. The art is learning, for any category of equipment, how much you need to spend to obtain good long-term value.

I'm still using the same pair of Sony headphones from circa 1997, that were just under $100.

Nothing has needed any replacement.

The ground connection on the 1/8" jack got finicky early on in the life of the cable (you have to bend it a little this way or that to get audio in both ears and with the channels separated), but in the 20 years after that problem appeared, it has not deteriorated one iota. You have to fiddle with it today with exactly the same pressure and nuance as in the year 2000.

I used the 1/4" adapter from time to time, like going directly into a synthesizer keyboard. Given 30 minutes to search around the house, I can probably find that thing.

>Or they can buy Sony MDR 7506 for about $100, and they will sound ok and last 20+ years.

I happen to also own a pair of 7506. Do note these are a closed set, and they are, by far, not comparable with HD600. Basically like night and day.

In the words of a coworker who also owns 7506, after trying my HD600: "Now the 7506 sound to me like an AM radio."

Still, I don't disagree they're decent as closed headphones at <$100, particularly if you only care about the mid range. But they're relatively colored, despite their popularity as "monitors", and much worse than the Japan-only mdr-cd900st classic.

I have about 4-5 pairs of headphones in a drawer of various $80-150 prices that were finally replaced with my $300 Sony ANCs. I just had to finally get so sick of my open office that I'd splurge that much coin into ANC.

HD600 are open monitors, so they are more suitable for non-open offices or home/studio use.

I'm unfortunate as ANC screws with my balance really hard and makes me extremely uncomfortable immediately and lasting quite a bit more upon removal. Thus on open office I'm stuck with closed w/o ANC. I use ath-msr7 there.

About two uears ago I got into mountain biking. Went into a bile shop with and spent $300 on a mountain-ish bike and a helmet.

I thought about upgrading multiple times because "I had outgrown the bike". An upgrade was $1200.

So, I decided to only upgrade if I could not beat my best time on a specific short trail. Well, I kept going faster and fastee. Untill the tires were the obvious thing holding me back.

I upgraded the tires for $20 (clearance sale) and tested again. Still faster.

Ended up not buying the new $1200 bike.

Buy used! You get the upgrade without having to spend as much money.

I do think the upgrade from a new $300 bike to a used (originally) $1200 bike would be very worth it.

I owned a pretty cheat big box bike, an $800 Kona Stuff (probably don't even make that anymore, and a $2700 Santa Cruz Bullet. Every time the upgrsde made a big difference and you could really feel the quality in what you were getting. I will say the upgrade from hardtail $800 bike to dual suspension $2,700 bike was a MASSIVE increase in performance.

Eh, something to be said for mid-range too.

I have a 12v cordless drill. Ended up saving me tons of work over the years but by no means either the best or the worst.

Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters.

Mid-range CPUs and GPUs are wonderful. Kitchen mixers, knives, screwdrivers, soldering irons, drill presses, etc.

Plenty of times the worst tool is so obviously terrible that you probably shouldn’t consider it. Sometimes the worst tool is dangerous, damages what you’re working on, or has bad ergonomics.

Bicycles. All those $100 bike-shaped objects out there. You don’t need to spend much more to get something comfortable that fits you and lasts a while.

Well one caveat: at some point, you reach a level of expertise such that you can evaluate tools for yourself, and don't need rules of thumb like this. At that point a mid-grade tool might make sense.

I do have some expertise in some of the areas you mentioned, and disagree with you:

Musical instruments: if you're starting off on guitar, get a used Yamaha for $80 and spend as much money as you can on lessons. It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic. I have been given more than one expensive guitar because people heard me play and thought I'd get more out of the guitar than they were getting out of it.

Bikes: I got a fixed-gear bike for $90 to use as a daily commuter. A month in, I was tired of getting flats, so I replaced the tires with Continental Gatorskins which cost more than the bike originally did. After that, the bike lasted me >5 years without modification, only occasional tune-ups. I got rid of the bike because I was bored with it, not because there was anything wrong with it, and paid $250 for a system that was functionally the same but looked a bit nicer--the only real upgrade was a Brooks Leather saddle. Tons of bike messengers are running similar systems far harder than I am.

Both music and biking have somewhat snobby subcultures that will talk crap on cheap gear to justify their own lavish purchases, but ultimately nobody can say anything about what guitar you're playing when you bust out Paranoid Android or what bike you're riding when you zip past them. Skills beat gear every time.

$80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar.

That is, buy something good enough that it doesn’t make you miserable when you’re just starting out. A lot of $80 guitars are absolutely miserable, or will be miserable shortly after you take them home.

> It's better to be a virtuoso with a Yamaha than to have a high-end Martin you can't play collecting dust in your attic.

Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments. They’re also not the cheapest guitars you can get. The cheapest guitars you can get are around $80, have high action, don’t stay in tune, and my experience is that you have good odds of getting cut by the fret wire or seeing the neck warp at some point after you take the guitar home.

That’s all I’m talking about—between “made as cheaply as possible” and “no expenses spared” there is this vast middle ground of “decent price/quality tradeoff”.

I’m by no means an expert on guitars—but I do have a small guitar maintenance kit, and I help out friends or colleagues set up their guitars to make them a bit more comfortable and playable. I’ve seen too many “cheap as possible” guitars where my conclusion is that the guitar is unplayable and it’s just beyond my ability to make it playable.

Totally agree. What’s more, if you discover that guitar playing isn’t for you, you can always sell it if it is a decent one. It may not cost you more in the end than if you bought a cheap one and threw it away or let it rot in the attic.

> $80 guitar and spending money on lessons—this goes against every piece of advice I’ve ever heard from a guitar teacher about buying your first guitar.

Sure, if you're already taking lessons...

> Yamaha guitars start around $160, and they’re fantastic beginner instruments.

Yamaha guitars start around $160 new.

If you go to a local guitar shop they almost always have playable used guitars in the <$100 range. Even Guitar Center will often have a Yamaha that's discounted because it was returned opened, or because it has a manufacturer blemish that doesn't affect play.

Guitar shops will almost never sell an unusable guitar in my experience (this is not true of consignment stores, thrift shops, or pawn shops).

Beginners aren’t in a position to figure out the difference between a usable $80 guitar and a barely playable $80 guitar.

My experience with Guitar Center specifically is that at most stores, most of the cheap guitars on sale won’t be set up properly and some of them will be missing strings. Buying an $80 guitar from GC is a roll of the dice.

If you know what you are doing you can buy a guitar for $60 or $40 on Craigslist. Doesn’t mean that you have good odds as a novice.

Agreed on GC, I don't really point people to GC in general because there are so many good local music stores which are invested in their communities.

Don't worry so much about Guitar Center... I think the core advice of buying a cheap (used?) X at an X store instead of a cheap X at a general purpose store is pretty good. Your local bike store isn't going to sell the same low end bike shaped objects as a department store or even a chain sports store. Your local music shop is less likely to sell awful guitar shaped objects than Walmart. Etc.

Guitars are special in that even expensive ones could often use a setup.

Whatever you buy, spend an extra $50-90 for a good set-up. I'd rather play a $300 guitar with a great setup than a $7000 one with a bad one.

> I have a 12v cordless drill. Ended up saving me tons of work over the years but by no means either the best or the worst

But are there cheaper drills that do the same?

corded drills, and if you are an infrequent user you dont have to worry about the battery going flat.

Most corded drills are pretty large though. I have 12v, 18v and corded drills and would never use the corded drill for small things because it's too clumsy.

12v for small things and 18v for small-medium, corded for large only. I often use both, 18v for drilling and 12v to put in the screws.

I'd say buy an 18v as your only tool first, but if you ever start on a project where it's struggling even a little, get a corded drill. They're good bang for the buck at ~$30.

The cheaper drills I’ve seen have motors that burn out or run out of torque. At least, that’s my experience with them. One of the ways you save money on a motor is by making the windings with thinner copper wires.

The higher-end drills are 18V or 20V models with enough power to, you know, hang sheetrock for eight hours a day. Something that I don’t need.

So I bought a mid-range drill, a relatively inexpensive 12V model.

Also cheap drills seem to have poor batteries or electrical setups that are rough on battery life. Even 6 months of a casual usage (pulling it out every other week for some small job) might be enough to basically brick the thing.

Even tradespeople (like union electricians) have this same dispute. In the US, one of the favored brands in the trade is Milwaukee Fuel 18v. Many electrical pros swear by these tools, even to the point of mildly judging people who use consumer gear on paid jobs.

But: other electrical pros will in turn mildly judge the Milwaukee-loving contingent as paying way too much for the logo. Tales will be told of Makita or Ridgid (the latter, a Home Depot house brand) 18v rigs that have outperformed more expensive gear in real conditions.

So, it's fun to talk about, but it seems fundamentally undecidable, at this level of granularity.

At lower levels of granularity -- specific tools -- there are a few legendary products that have been made consistently high-quality for so long that they're almost universally acknowledged to be worth the money, and also that there's little point in paying more. One example that comes to mind is Klein linesman's pliers.

>Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters.

For "hobby" items, it's mostly about developing habits. You don't need top-of-the-line equipment to "make music". Once you enjoying the art of making music, you can easily move on to bigger and better equipment.

You don’t need top-of-the line equipment to make music, but if you get the cheapest instruments you can find, they might be physically painful to play, fail to stay in tune, etc.

On Bicycles: I've ridden cheap bikes ( $<= 750 ) all my life. When you buy cheap, you probably aren't purchasing something that is designed for your height and width. They also begin to fall apart after a year (handle bar wrap unwinding, beauty parts pop off, gears start to slip, chain derails). Tuneups dont last long.

Yesterday I went to my local Trek store and rode a $2500 bike for the first time, and it was a joy to ride. I didn't know gear changes could be so accurate/seamless/instant. First time I rode with disc brakes: I feel way more in control when I need to stop at high speed. The frame fit my body perfectly. Obviously the bike will wear down like cheaper bikes, but the difference is night and day.

The bike will wear down more than cheaper bikes, unfortunately.

Chainrings, derailleurs, cassettes on mid-range bikes are made of lighter metals and to tighter tolerances than those on cheaper bikes. You'll replace them 3x as often and pay 3x as much for the parts, so maintenance is an order of magnitude more expensive per kilometre.

There are some exceptions: higher-quality bottom brackets seem to last longer, and on a cheap bike it may not be worth replacing them at all. Maybe wheel bearings too. And some basic services like chain lube are going to cost the same (whether you do it yourself or take it to a bike shop). But overall, the cost of maintenance goes up faster than the initial price of the bike.

Thanks for the info! Could you give me an idea of the yearly cost to maintain a mid-range bike?

Depends on so many things - principally the distance you ride, but also the riding conditions, how you store it, whether you keep it clean, whether you can do minor/moderate service yourself.

Personally I budget about €200/year for my €1200 road bike for 2000 km/year. I store it indoors, ride it 20% in the rain, don't take great care of it otherwise, and take it to the shop for anything more than changing tubes/tyres.

The cost of some chain lube, grease, a citrus based bike cleaner and a couple of brushes should total less that $50/60 (they often come in bundles) and will keep you covered until they run out (approx 8-12 months, less for the chain lube).

I clean and re-lube my road bike when it gets dirty or starts making noise (literally once every 3-4 months), and it gets ridden 3-5 days a week. I clean and re-lube my mountain bike slightly more frequently because it gets far dirtier and gets ridden far harder - usually if it starts making noises, or anything feels (too) gritty or it's just too dirty. Once a month it usually gets a quick clean.

All in all, it's a fairly minor amount of time, money and energy.

As for component wear, I'm going to disagree with the OP - my friends and I have found that better components _tend_ to last longer, up until the point of diminishing returns (race level componentry). For example SRAM GX would be preferable over NX/SX for quality and lifetime.

A brand new bike can be as low as €100 highly dependent on current availability and discounts. Cheap bikes are €100-200, maybe up to €250 for an adult man mountain bike.

I'm shocked you'd call a $750 bike "cheap" when that's undeniably high end.

https://bicyclewarehouse.com/collections/road-bikes?sort_by=...

New road bikes start around $700. Im shocked you can find new bikes for 100 euros!

See here, the first adult road bike is at €260.

https://www.decathlon.fr/p/velo-de-route-triban-rc100-gris/_...

They must have skimped on everything else to get a 100% aluminum road bike so you're probably better off buying any other type of bike in this price range.

I wouldn't ride a bike that costs less than $500, tbh.

> I'm shocked you'd call a $750 bike "cheap" when that's undeniably high end.

It's not. If we're talking about buying new, $750 is about entry level for a real bike from a name-brand manufacturer. If you go to an actual bike store rather than a supermarket, that's what you'll pay. High end is multiple thousands. That's just what they cost, and if you actually use the bike for more than a year then it'll be cheaper in the long run.

I think the second-cheapest is usually the best starter product. The cheapest product requires every possible sacrifice to quality, but the second-cheapest only made the tradeoffs that make sense. You can buy the second-cheapest and still get most of the benefits mentioned in the article without having to become a mini-expert evaluating whether the cheapest option is at least safe and functional.

And I think a second-tier product is often the right high-end product to choose. The most expensive product made the highest-quality choice at every step, but the next-tier down just made as many improvements that really make sense. Luckily, once you are deciding to purchase high-end, you are more capable of evaluating the different products.

The second cheapest is often where the seller makes the most profit. There is a pricing strategy around this idea - people will rarely buy the cheapest or the most expensive item of the list. Their function is to shift up all prices and set the bar

That only usually holds within a given brand. Second or third cheapest on the market probably doesn’t suffer the same problem.

You're saying that as if someone else profiting off of providing you a product you want is a bad thing.

Paying more for something that you think is higher quality hile beeing just as bad as the cheapest product is a bad thing. Assuming parent comment is right that this is the case.

Musical instruments. The low-end ones tend to be true disasters.

Funny story about that one. My ex-wife's family are professionals in the music industry: playing, repairing, etc. Her dad plays, repairs, and sells trumpets. A mom and her kid come into the store and he hates playing the trumpet. I mean hates it, he's not good at it, can't stand practicing and begs to just leave it broken. They come into the get a valve replaced one the kids plays, and while they are doing the paperwork and looking around her dad looks at the trumpet he needs to repair. It's horrible. I mean garbage. She bought it for him, because "she didn't know if he would like it, " and got him one from an ebay store. My ex-father in law goes over and picks up a mid-range one for students, and just says, "Try this out. See what you think." The kid plays it realizes that it's 100 times easier to make a decent sound and loves it. He hated playing because of the instrument, not because he didn't like it. My ex agreed to sell her the new trumpet on one condition, that she giver her the old one so it will never be played again.

Definitely.

~$200 midi keyboard vs ~$700 electric piano with weighted keys.

It's even more dramatic than going from a spectrum keyboard to a mechanical one. Torture vs Pleasure to use.

Yep! Playing cheap brass instruments is really difficult. When I first got an expensive horn it was the most sublime feeling, instead of working hard to make a sound it was like effortlessly singing through the instrument. You just breathe and everything resonates the way it should and all is in tune. It feels so natural.

Had a moment like that back when I was a teenager taking violin lessons. One day my teacher was berating me for not having practiced enough (she was right) but I insisted it was because my violin was giving me a hard time. So she challenged me: "use my violin and show me". The thing was beautiful to play, and I managed to play the whole piece in a go. She still knew I hadn't been practicing, but I got a chance to play a great instrument.

However, my cheap violin did have a good thing: the bare D string would make its box resonate when tuned correctly. And from there the rest of the instrument could be tuned pretty well. I still have that cheap violin, however I stopped playing a long time ago. I should pick it up again some time.

yep- entirely application specific. for machine tools, expensive is pretty much the only way to go for metrology and bits and mills etc. for instruments you are totally right- the cheapest professional grade instruments are almost always the best value. great comment

Everyone in this thread seems to assume buying a brand-new item. My preferred route is to buy the high-end of one generation prior, used, from somebody who is upgrading to the latest and greatest. They can pay the early-adopter tax for me.

And if you decide to sell it, it probably won’t have depreciated any further anyway.

If you're experienced enough to be able to tell (or have a trusted friend) then that's a good route. But if you're a beginner buying used then it's a lemon market and you can very easily get ripped off.

If you think about it, the text editor for diagrams actually is mid range because you could alternatively do the using "echo", enter it in binary, even on punch cards or pen and paper.

I do all of my diagrams by drawing them with a pencil and taking a picture with my cell phone. Often, some engineer takes offense and enters it into a drawing or CAD program -- problem solved!

Sometimes using less-than-the-best tools directly leads to better products with smoother development cycles. I'm an indie games developer and I develop on a machine that is the 'Minimum Hardware Requirements' for my games. So, if you visit the Steam page for my current game, the Minimum Requirements are just the specs of my computer, which would be considered mid-range when I built it in 2016, and now is very underpowered.

The plus-side to all of this is I know my game runs well on lower spec hardware. There's a confidence that I have that it'll perform decently on 99% of computers and laptops/macbooks. If something runs slowly then I know I can't fudge things in the release build by assuming/hoping it'll run okay on the majority of computres, but I also know that if I do need to optimise something then it's not premature, unnecessary optimisation, which helps me use my time properly.

Though this seems only relevant if running on lower spec hardware (mid range 2016 machines) is actually relevant to the product. If it isn't and customer would rather have better graphics at a higher cost of running it, you are developing against a metric of success which is unfortunately wrong.

Yes, hence OPs use of the word "sometimes"

Alternatively, Factorio is known for being low powered enough a toaster can run it.

Someone who can't afford a fancy computer can afford your game.

I do this a different way. I think about how much I'm going to use something and try my best to over-invest in what is typically cheap and could last years and under-invest (or avoid all together) in what is expensive or could last less than a year.

Pen: Very expensive.

Sunglasses: Very expensive.

Phone: Very expensive.

Laptop: Very expensive.

Shoes / most clothing: Midrange, since they don't last long, but they're not that expensive in the first place.

Car: Non-existent.

Housing: Far cheaper than I could afford.

Same thing when it comes to tools. I'll buy an expensive utility knife and a cheap jackhammer. Unless I were going to jackhammer for a living, it isn't used much and it's a reasonably expensive tool in the first place so why over pay for it?

>Sunglasses: Very expensive.

This one is confusing. Sunglasses are 90% fashion. What exactly are you getting with an expensive pair?

I take the opposite route. Cheap sunglasses that I'm unconcerned about dropping, sitting on, or leaving behind.

I have one pair of designer sunglasses that I picked up on sale. They are comfortable to the point that I can barely feel them. They also look really good.

I also have a ton of $10 sunglasses from street vendors and online stores.

For my taste, all the mid-range sunglasses are super boring and make you look boring. Great for going out and meeting other boring people. Everything cool is either some cheapo monstrosity that you find from a street vendor or online store for $10, or from a designer brand.

If you don’t care about fashion then go ahead and buy boring sunglasses.

> all the mid-range sunglasses are super boring and make you look boring. Great for going out and meeting other boring people.

Found this comment rubbed me the wrong way - seems insane to me to judge the boringness of a person by the price of their sunglasses

> Found this comment rubbed me the wrong way - seems insane to me to judge the boringness of a person by the price of their sunglasses

You must be responding to how you feel, because you sure as hell aren’t responding to what I wrote.

Allow me to explain my position.

Clothing is a form of communication. When you wear particular clothing, it communicates which group you identify with or want to associate with.

Let’s suppose that we were having a conversation and you said to me, “I don’t like to stand out, I like to blend in with the crowd and avoid being noticed.” I might think that you were a bit boring. You can communicate the same thing by wearing boring clothing.

What I’m doing is judging you based on the things that you communicate to me. If you are bad at non-verbal communication, don’t worry about accidentally coming off as boring—it’s very hard to communicate “boring” with your clothing, and it doesn’t happen by accident.

> You must be responding to how you feel, because you sure as hell aren’t responding to what I wrote.

I'm just responding to that quote from your last post.

> When you wear particular clothing, it communicates which group you identify with or want to associate with.

Agree to a point, but I don't think "Boring" is generally a group someone would try to identify/associate with (I'm assuming you're using boring as a derogatory term here). I also disagree that outgoingness is synonymous with how interesting a person is (in fact I'm sure you'd agree there are many instances of the contrary).

And outside of being "good" or "bad" at non-verbal communication you're forgetting another important direction: people who do not care.

Take you for example - I find you very interesting because you have strong opinions that differ to mine - It would have been a shame had I immediately categorised you as boring given the sunglasses you were able to afford or if you didn't care about sunglasses beyond their function.

> I'm just responding to that quote from your last post.

You said, “seems insane to me to judge the boringness of a person by the price of their sunglasses”

This is some kind of straw argument—to be clear, it’s not what I wrote, it’s not what I meant, it’s not what I implied.

> And outside of being "good" or "bad" at non-verbal communication you're forgetting another important direction: people who do not care.

It is a mistake to think of “does not care” as some kind of meaningful third position. It is not.

Here’s an analogy. Let’s say I ask you, “Did you take the last slice of cake?” It’s a yes/no question with social stakes—maybe I’m upset that I didn’t get any cake. Is there a way that you can avoid communicating a response to my question? No, not really. You heard the question, I’m waiting for your response. You can say yes or no, you can change the topic, you can dodge the question, you can turn the question around, and you can even stay silent—but it is nearly impossible for you to avoid making a conscious decision to communicate a response.

Clothing is like that, but the question is implied and the response is nonverbal. Under ordinary circumstances, you must choose how to dress yourself. You can choose to grab whatever is on top of the pile, you can choose to pick out an outfit, you can choose to go outside in your pajamas or stark naked, but you cannot somehow choose not to make a choice.

Take a moment and visualize what “I don’t care how others see me” looks like. Do you pick average clothing to blend in? Do you wear whatever you like? Do you carefully observe gender norms when buying clothing from the store? Do you wear whatever has the most pockets? Do you wear the same clothing sitting around the house as you do when you visit a friend’s house? Do you wear T-shirts with characters from your favorite cartoon? Do you wear something from the pile of T-shirts I got for free from vendors at tech conventions?

The problem is—once you are aware that you are making a choice, you aren’t really in a position to abdicate that choice.

I have a pair of Oakley Juliets that must be on their fifth set of lenses - as far as I can tell the frames are effectively indestructible (and I've put that to the test with the aid of dinghy booms quite a few times).

They were quite expensive, but have turned out to be pretty good value 15+ years later.

> Cheap sunglasses

Maybe OP prefers rhinestone shades? ;)

Sunglasses are 90% fashion.

Not the ones I buy. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of fashion in those Oakleys but there's a lot of function, too. They don't slip down my nose, the lenses are coated and don't collect as much crap, and the frames don't snap after a year. After fifteen years my oldest Oakleys are still going after less expensive sunglasses have broken or proven unsatisfactory. But those sunglasses also have to stand up to a life of trail running and hiking.

OTOH, if one is just looking to keep the sun out of the eyes while driving, $250 sunglasses might be overkill.

I'm OP.

Merely paying more for sunglasses doesn't make them good. It takes a long time to find ones that are muted enough to be cool, and yet with enough flourish in the details to be distinctive.

There is also the quality of the light that is filtered. I only ever buy "*3" (high degree of light protection) and preferably with polarized for better contrast. Whether it is $250 or $500 they're on your face so much they're a much and a quality pair will last years. It's a good thing to spend money on, though I do admit that it doesn't always have to be expensive. You can get lucky and find a great pair in an old antiques shop and get them re-lensed for something reasonable.

>I think about how much I'm going to use something and try my best to over-invest in what is typically cheap and could last years and under-invest (or avoid all together) in what is expensive or could last less than a year. [...]

>Housing: Far cheaper than I could afford.

Why? Isn't a house something that can last decades and is something you use every day?

Can last decades, or you might move. Your income might go up or it might go down. The house might appreciate in value or it might go down in value. If you have the best house you can afford, you’re “locked in” and might have to turn down otherwise exciting opportunities because they don’t pay you enough cash to make mortgage payments.

Plus, I know enough people that bought a big house, don’t use it, and just end up buying furniture for rooms they don’t use.

Because you have a lot more flexibility with a house payment that you can easily make each month, versus one you can barely make if you pinch some pennies and your spouse doesn't lose his job. Had we purchased a house we looked at about ten years ago, my wife would probably still be working a job she wasn't fond of at the time, 'cuz gotta a mortgage payment to make.

This is complicated. Housing doubles as a bet on the local property values as well as a good that needs to be repaired and maintained. It's also subject to property tax, so the more you have the more tax you pay. At least here in Toronto.

Between investing in other assets like stocks (or, more realistically holding cash until the stock market stops acting crazy) I think housing is overvalued where I live right now and the maintenance is more of a hassle than I'm willing to put up with right now.

But you're not fully wrong. If I lived somewhere in the sticks I'd build a lot more house. Less property tax, less alternatives like plays or parks. Also, in the country more of your investments can earn or save money, like gardens or vineyards or workshops. In the city it's usually just a waste of space.

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.

There's few tools where buying a cheap but good enough to do the job one is more expensive than renting twice.

Also if you own your own jack hammer and whatnot you'll take on projects you would have otherwise not.

Yeah I'm the OP. It's funny, I bought the jackhammer for a single job after doing the math that it would cost me just as much as renting a more expensive one. That was over a decade ago. Since then it's been used countless times for all sorts of random jobs where we otherwise would have used a pickaxe or a chisel or an axe. We even split logs with it out at my parents house, haha.

I follow a completely opposite model. I research and learn as much as I can about something before committing to it and get the best equipment I can afford. Consequently, I’ve enjoyed all my hobbies over the years and find myself going back to things often.

I have never regretted investing in quality tools. It’s not necessary to buy the most expensive option, but prioritizing quality and ergonomics over price is the right play (at least for me).

> I research and learn as much as I can about something before committing to it

For me, the time I end up spending on research and the mild stress I feel when trying to make a decision is not worth it at the very beginning.

Agree. I buy high quality tools and keep them for life. I have a toolbox full of Craftsman tools that are about 60 years old, which are enough to completely rebuild a car - and have done so several times.

I have 50 year old garden tools that have decades of life left. The handles get a quick sanding and a coat of linseed oil every year or two. We do, however, wear out pitchforks in about 15 years: the tines get too short!

If I bought crappy tools, I'd have a life full of crappy tools, which is not my style. I don't buy gold plated or frilly tools, though.

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.

I agree that an ASCII diagram helps concentrate on the content by making the attention to the irrelevant impossible.

But it's way clumsy and hard to edit when you need to change the text and move the boxes because of that, making it... not the best tool for the job.

I would take Graphviz [1], or went to https://plantuml.com/ and drew a nicer diagram while using fewer characters. Also, a much more easy to edit one.

So no, don't take "the worst tool for the job" unless you're masochistic.

Instead, realize what the job is really about, what is important and what is not, and then take the best tool for that important part, which would free you from ever having to deal with the irrelevant details.

[1]: https://graphviz.org/Gallery/directed/hello.html

"But it's way clumsy and hard to edit when you need to change the text and move the boxes because of that, making it... not the best tool for the job."

Original article says "I’m not doing this completely bare-knuckles. Emacs has tools like artist-mode that make it easier than manually positioning every character." See: https://youtu.be/cIuX87Xo8Fc?t=149

This is good, but again this is a solution like using a vector drawing program, only on a slightly weirder canvas. You still care about what your boxes look like, and fiddle with them.

Graphviz removes this concern. You say "I want a chart with nodes connected like so", and `dot` provides just that.

Surprised nobody mentioned draw.io[1] so far. John should give it a try :)

1: https://www.draw.io/

This guidance is what I like to think of as something to help shape ones mindset rather than a golden law. It can help you make a choice for lack of better information. But there maybe better ways to make a choice if you have better information.

Also I notice a number of people seem to be mistaking the article as saying buying the "Best". But it's actually best you can afford, which puts a lot of people in the midrange. The word "afford" gives you a lot of wiggle room about what that exactly means for you.

The other thing I think is important that many people are bringing up is for domain X then the cheapest you will fail or have a hard time (ie, they have better information). But the guidance ISN'T that buying the cheapest will work out fine for you, it is directly saying it may not work out at all, so, you should fail quick on "tools" that are not working out or are problematic. So it's trying to help you converge on a solution for lack of better information. Because there is plenty of domain Ys where the cheapest will work out fine for the limited use you have.

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.

This reminds me of Nassim Taleb's barbell strategy.

Basically, combine a low-risk strategy with a high-risk-high-reward strategy and avoid medium risk. That way, if the high-risk strategy fails, you won't be completely ruined, but if the high-risk strategy succeeds, you'll have a big reward.

The "job" here is drawing diagrams that describe a set of interrelated parts and Adobe Illustrator is not a tool for that job.

The first thing you need to make the kind of illustrations he's making are the ability to automatically route the lines in a way that doesn't look embarrassingly bad. (Not the Bezier curves that Powerpoint comes with)

The other problem is how to lay out the boxes so that the diagram tells a story and that is a matter of elbow grease and having pride in your work.

All of the time somebody shows us a hairball of 10^6 nodes that have 10^8 connections or so and expects to get praise for it. If the culprit is lucky they might make the cover of Scientific American or something, but nobody is the wiser after looking at that type of diagram.

Valid reasoning but I've encountered some situations where you definitely don't want the cheapest possible object when starting out. For instance, when I was learning guitar, at the time, the cheapest guitars were junk and wouldn't stay in tune and had other problems that affected one's ability to use them to practice music. A more expensive instrument is worth it because a beginner stuck with the absolutely lowest tier instrument may never get started because it's so bad. I still think it's wise to get a modest instrument though.

Yeah, I found the same thing with bikes. I hated riding bikes until someone gave me a used but nice road bike. It was an entirely different activity than riding the cheap, heavy bike I had before.

"if you need a tool, buy the cheapest one you can find. If it’s inadequate, or breaks, or you use it a lot, then buy the best one you can afford"

I don't know how I feel about this... The unsaid thing here is that you will end up landfilling the broken or inadequate tool and buy twice what you need.

These days, if I'm going to put money into buying material goods, I feel they have to meet at least a minimal "this isn't going to end up in landfill after the first time I use it" bar.

A lot of cheap tools barely meet this level, sadly...

Interestingly, no one asked me what software I used when I created diagrams in the vector graphics app sketch[0], but once I started using ascii diagrams using monodraw[1], everyone wanted to know what I was using.

I find the aesthetic extremely "precious;" that's why I do it. Affectations are memorable.

0: https://www.sketch.com/ 1: https://monodraw.helftone.com/

ASCIIflow is nice if you want something that can run on a not-mac. Typing out your ascii is a little tedious. I would rather freehand it in mspaint.

http://asciiflow.com/

I play bass, and my advice for people who are new to an instrument is to invest a bit of money. (For bass guitar, this means spending $250-$350 for your first guitar).

You can buy a bass for under $100, but many of these guitars cannot be set up properly. The strings sit really high, so you need to apply a lot of pressure to play (the alternative being that they buzz against the frets).

Learning on an instrument like that adds a lot of frustration. What's worse, it can teach you a lot of bad habits, like over-gripping.

The article hits the nail on the head .. somewhat. I've found that asking a slightly deeper level question more helpful personally. In the article's example : What are we trying to do ? Show a diagram. While it is tempting to ask "What tool should I use", perhaps it is worthwhile thinking "What is the deeper need here"? If it is communicating with stakeholders (duh), can I get away with a pencil sketch and digitise them? This way, I have shaved a bunch of time learning ASCII tools or Adobe Illustrator. Kind of fits in with my (borrowed) mindset of "Doing things that don't scale" [0]

Of course, if I find myself doing pencil sketches all the time , it is worthwhile investigating better ways.

[0] https://www.inc.com/business-insider/paul-grahams-counter-in....

When coding in Java, I usually start with a shell script that compiles the code rather than, say, a POM or a Gradle build - I don't upgrade to a dedicated build system until a) the shell script becomes more trouble than it's worth or b) I have to share with somebody else. There's something to be said for having complete control over every aspect of the build.

I find Gradle pretty straightforward when it comes to compiling Java projects, you can customize and add options even dynamically like a shell script

I disagree. Having complete control just gives you the chance to micromanage build steps and get bogged down in the details.

I start with the most minimal POM possible - just listing dependencies - and firmly resist any custom build steps or even custom configuration. That way everything is standard, my build will be cross-platform and IDE-agnostic, and anyone else who picks up the codebase can immediately understand the build and be productive.

If I absolutely need some custom build step, then I'll go all the way to making a proper, first-class maven plugin. I'll write it in proper production-quality Java with unit tests, code coverage and all the rest of it.

IMO customising build steps in a scripting language (whether that's shell, Gradle, or even something like Python) is exactly the middle ground that you want to avoid. You can waste lots of time fiddling with how your build is structured, and it's still going to be less maintainable.

A more practical example than his (ascii drawing) is: always use the system libraries when writing code. “But vector/map/... has too much overhead!” Naah, getting your code working is the hard part. Only if the code survives is it worth looking to see if the standard String code is costing you a lot, which case you can replace it.

I don't know about worst tool. I would prefer to just say most expedient or accessible tool for the job. Something that you can hack together in 5 minutes that gets the spirit of the task accomplished and doesn't lock you in on something more heavy-handed.

The key with it being accessible or expedient is that you can iterate at a higher frequency. If you start with a tool that is legitimately terrible just for the sake of saving money, you may end up sacrificing more time than you otherwise would have wanted to on something slightly more expensive.

There is a balance across lots of variables here. For me, the biggest concern is turnaround time on features. In some cases, taking weeks to do it right is the best option. In others, continuing to string along the hacky approach is best. Long term vs short term concerns. It's impossible to come up with 1 rule for everything unless you want to leave a lot of productivity on the table.

The same idea goes for art supplies. When you're learning to paint, the cheap paints are good enough for your skill level while you learn the basics; when you understand why your paints are the cheap paints, you'll understand the value of the expensive paints in a way you couldn't before.

I usually buy the best tool that I can afford, my reasoing is:

- This forces me to research first, if I am dropping €500 on a new piece of woodworking equiment I want to make sure that's not going to be wasted.

- There is a better market for used expensive tools and they can sell for a even higher price than a new one (I am looking at you Festool Domino)

- I pet my expensive tools. The cheap stuff just get throw around and get lost.

- There is a argument about buying a cheap one first and then once it breaks you get a better one. That doesn't really work for me, several of these cheap tools can last for ages.

- Good tools requires less skill to use; they just do their job. With cheap tools you have to account not only your lack of skill but also deviations introduced by the tool.

As a data scientist I interpret this as : if you can do it in SQL, do it in SQL. Once you really can't improve your, say, recommendation engine with SQL move to ML/DL.

And sometimes it is better not to know anything about deep learning because the tech debt is not worth it it the medium term.

I think an analogy is for buying any tool T, buy your first T at Harbor Freight, then for your replacement T maybe look for a Makita/Milwaukee/&c or even Snap-On/MAC. For many kinds of tools, this seems sensible to me.

Exception to the rule being safety equipment.

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.

I followed much the same path as you. And then I did buy the Micro Four Thirds camera for an overseas holiday.

It was better enough to satisfy my craving for manual settings and RAW output. But it was bulky enough for it to be a decision "to take it" anywhere and expensive enough not to leave in the glovebox/bag/convenient-nearby-place. Ok compromise for travelling for the DLSR types but maybe the fullframe sony rx1 would've been better.

But wife can pick up almost any camera and instantly make a much better picture than me. I suck at composition. Or I am biased towards my wife. Who knows.

Either way, I ditched it all and now just use the smartphone(Open Camera), but try to get better at composition...

I have a decently expensive Bahco socket set. I find that because it's expensive I always know where it is in the house, I never leave it behind in the shed when I move, I always make sure each tool goes back in its proper place after I've done with it.

I tend to find that I treat cheap tools with a lot less care and attention. Flaws in their design (e.g. susceptibility to rust) takes care of the rest.

Maybe it's just a quirk of my personality but I'd have spent almost as much replacing cheap tools. Besides, it cost about two hours worth of labour at hourly rates in my area so one decent job and it's paid for itself.

He might have read this from Adam Savage. This is as close as I can find https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/941149124497305600 or here in the reply? to the tweet (i don't use twitter) https://twitter.com/scottcale/status/941310140392857601

This is why I love using Emacs. It's great for one-off tasks, super customizable, and yet easily replaced by the right tool when needed.

This extends to software.

Don’t start by building an app. Start with a spreadsheet. Figure out every step, get it real ironed out. Do manual work if you have to.

Only when you’re certain tht your idea solves a real problem and your magic spreadsheet is killing your will to live, then write code and make a real thing.

Too often people jump into building only to realize they have no idea what they need or that their idea isn’t needed.

There are millions of magic spreadsheets that kill people's will to live, lead businesses to make billion dollar bad decisions, etc. (We need weapons of mass construction, but spreadsheets-as-we-know-them are weapons of mass destruction.)

Billion dollar spreadsheet is a little late. Build real code around the 100k level

This is a great advice, but the human nature prevents two things. First, you never do it at the right time. Second, you cut corners which would heavily affect the ease or even a possibility of such transition. I spent half my work life unfucking spreadsheets into databases and usually it is nuances and misstructure all the way down. You have to be a genius software developer and a master of discipline to be able to turn your sheets to code in zero years. Add some collaborators and it's over. The ability to make a formula in a cell instead of a column is a formula for disaster.

If I was looking for the worst tool for a poor man's ERP, I would consider phpMyAdmin or a similar "data studio" tool, but not a spreadsheet. There are plenty, all ready for a frontend to be written in place of them.

Reminds me about how a lot of early Dropbox diagrams were just pencil sketches scanned and touched up. Someone had better things to do.

A related principle: when given a choice between a subscription and a one-off purchase always take the subscription until you've paid the price of the object. Most of the time I cancel the subscription, so the principle pays for itself in amortized cost, and I spend at most twice as much money in the worst case

There is one case where going for a bad tool can be risky: when the cost of migrating away from it grows over time.

I totally second this and I have been doing something similar for decades, for any kind of tool/equipment.

I use this for tools. From Harbor Freight to Dewalt if I use it. Anyways, in the author's context, I've been using Miro.com for all of my diagrams. I love it. If you ever want to upgrade from ASCII art, check it out!

I like the idea. Not sure it works on its own, but something like "Investment in tools should be proportionate to your knowledge about the domain" seems reasonable.

Beginner? Pick an cheap tool. Expert? pick the best tool :)

I'm not happy with the premise that 'best' means 'most expensive' as i'm pretty sure anyone involved with software will undoubtably know - Oracle anyone? :)

There's a definite link between aggressive sales and how terrible a product is.

The shittier the product the more agressive sales people are required to sell it?

I'm not sure which necessarily comes first but yes.

https://app.diagrams.net/ is the modern version of ascii diagrams

Dunno. If you'd need a slightly better tool than ASCII, perhaps Adobe would still be a ridiculous answer.

You don't have to do this because there are often good recommendations for cheap tools.

Decent. Reminds me of the timed I designed a decent part of our house in Excel.

I recall Jason Fried talking about he uses a fat whiteboard marker (as opposed to a thin marker) during concept design sessions to resist the temptation to start working on details too early.

I believe it is Stewart Brand’s maxim

Reply on news.ycombinator.com