Using this as a justification not to have good tools ("What's wrong with you? Suffering worked great last time") is bogus logic; there's no reason not to have good tools. The other side of the coin, NOT doing something because you don't have good tools yet, is equally poisonous.
This middle ground approach is probably best.
PG writes about tools and their importance in "Beating the Averages": http://paulgraham.com/avg.html .