Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

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This behaviour can end up being pathological and counterproductive.

It drives my wife INSANE that... I have nice brand new pair of shoes from 5 years ago I never ever wear, because I refuse to put wear on them and instead use the cheap shoes from 8 years ago. Same with shirts and sweaters - the nice ones she bought me over last few years are waiting in the closet until my old shirts and sweaters die - and some are getting close to 20yo.

Nothing wrong with it, as such. But it's not always rational behaviour either - more of a left-over compulsion from leaner time (I come from eastern europe and then 2 years of civil war).

As for people repairing anything - much as I love his writing, I disagree with Heinlein's "specialization is for insects". I can help a friend with computer or fix our network. There's weird things I can do like watches and whatnots. There's any number of things I can do well. But I'm probably better off doing the thing I do well, getting paid for it, and then in turn paying plumber or electrician or mechanic for things they do well.

If fixing a car or your washing machine makes sense or is your hobby / pasttime, brilliant. But sometimes it doesn't, and it's OK to keep the circle of life/economy going :).

I fix lots of things and there is no experience like doing something, there is also this weird cross-pollination thing going where knowledge acquired in one domain helps you in another. So while I am well aware that most of my repair jobs are net negative in terms of actual material value generation for me, the gradual increase in my capabilities in many different domains ends up helping me even in my chosen specialisation. By this point I am just generally at an advanced beginner stage of anything after some basic research (which I have naturally becomes quite good at).

There is also a skin in the game effect that even a paid random plumber is not actually that invested in doing a good job and, while you cannot compete in terms of speed of executing a fix, or possession of special tools, you can compete - and exceed - on final quality simply because you really care about the final outcome.

One thing to add is that if you value the learning from trying a repair job, doing it on a problem in front of you is close to free. Taking a class would cost money.

> There is also a skin in the game effect that even a paid random plumber is not actually that invested in doing a good job and, while you cannot compete in terms of speed of executing a fix, or possession of special tools, you can compete - and exceed - on final quality simply because you really care about the final outcome.

I have experienced this recently, as I have been making the rounds through various lawn care companies. I'm on my fourth one in the past four years, and I just have not been able to find one that truly cares about the lawn with the same love and detail that I would. And why should they? I am just one of many lawns they take care of each month.

Although I still generally lean towards the parent commenter's philosophy of paying the experts to do what they are good at, there are just some areas where the extra level of care and attention is worth the decrease of efficiency in getting the thing done.

I learned to fix my car because I was a broke kid with a shitty corrola. I was learning programming at around the same time as when my car was having problems.

And honestly at the time the two felt kind of similar. Both were super scary, black boxes. But both were things that normal human beings learned to do. You didn't have to be some crazy genius. And a lot of times you really are debugging a car, except since it's physical, it's a lot more intuitive.

I once tallied up all the repairs vs what I would've paid mechanics and it came to 18k. Nowadays that's a price I can swallow and it no longer makes financial sense for me to do my own repairs.

But I now have a garage full of "free" tools and I can tell very confidently when mechanics bullshit me. But that happens less than just simply talking the lingo and having the mechanic appreciate that I know what's going on and can commiserate on how shitty a repair is gonna be.

I think most sw people can enjoy and go into the physical world. I think there's so many similarities and never understood certain people's reluctance or even badge of honor of being bad at working with physical stuff

I used to do this with shoes as well because if they're worn, they fit well. They've adapted to your feet (or your feet to them?). Whereas with new shoes, you still have to make them fit well.

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