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Comment by VincentEvans | Hacker News Reader

Reading some of the comment section here makes this veteran DIYer sneer. Ya’ll need to “grow some” and unlearn helplessness.

Pay someone else who learned the simple steps to do the simple work and save yourself the time for more productive activities, but stop congratulating yourself on “avoiding a disaster” - too much drama for the task at hand here.

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"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you know more than others, that's great, but in that case please share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Putdowns don't help anybody, and make less interesting reading.

Its not a regular thing to work on for the majority of people. What's the point of manning up for this particular DIY if the danger is high? Is it really that big of an ego hit to pay someone for a job once in awhile?

I'm sorry, but this "sneering" attitude is hideous. It's OK to do this job yourself if you have enough experience. It's also OK to not do it yourself because it is, in fact, dangerous. It's also OK to suggest that other DIY'ers err on the side of caution if they aren't 100% confident.

What's not OK is insisting broadly to man up and do it yourself, stop being helpless, etc. You could encourage an innocent person to severely injure themselves. It's pointless and irresponsible.

It also only takes one mistake to severely injure yourself and permanently reduce your quality of life, it's worth considering the value you put on that when deciding these things. I like DIYing as well, but sometimes the risk vs reward isn't worth some extra money. People who get injured doing DIY work often have a similar attitude as yours until they make a critical mistake taking on something they "understand" and haven't done before.

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