[brudgers]

Ordinary choices are not between bread and cake.

Ordinary choices are between bread and nothing.

A $45 keyboard is rounding error on a $500 keyboard if you decide to buy one.

And buying and trying the cheap one is how a person gets direct experience to make a well informed decision.

[fho]

"buy twice" is one of those live advices I heard and adhere to since.

It's basically the optimistic interpretation of "buy cheap, buy twice":

When I consider getting into something I buy cheap first, the idea being that that is enough to get a feel ...

... then you buy the second time and don't cheap out. But this purchase is more informed and you really get to appreciate it more because you know the step up from the cheap thing.

And sometimes... maybe even most of the time... the cheap thing is just enough.

[somat]

As opposed to the old mechanics koan "Buy once cry once"

But sure, in general if you don't know what you are doing start cheap and treat it like a learning opportunity.

The real danger is in when you use shitty tools and think that because of that you are bad at something, so give up.

My personal story on this was when I hosed a laptop(don't disable usb when there are only usb devices) All the normal ways to fix it were not working so I went way out of my comfort zone and was going to try and reflash it the hard way with a chip programmer(It's already a brick I am not going to break it further) And I bought the cheapest sioc flashing kit I could find. and... nothing was working right, and because I have no idea what I am doing, does it just not work? do I have the wrong programmer? should I desolder the chip from the board? No clue. So it sat on the healing bench for a year. Then I stumbled on a forum thread complaining about cheap sioc clips, gathered my courage and bought a nice clip, tried again and it worked the first time. So on one level thanks Pomona electronics, your sioc clip was amazing, but the bigger lesson, I thought the task was just too unknowable and really I just had bad tools.

[brudgers]

and think that because of that you are bad at something, so give up.

If you are learning a meaningfully new domain, you are bad at it.

If that causes you to give up, you are giving up on learning.

And in the case of your repair, the fact that the broken system sat on the bench for a year while you learned more meant that you did not give up.

Meaningful adult learning of new domains takes years. If something doesn't it either is not a new domain or the standard of performance is not an adult standard.

Finally, you could have bought the more expensive programmer first, but you might not have had the skill and knowledge and relevant experience to use it properly a year earlier...or to put it another way, you didn't have the direct experience to recognize the value of the post on which tool to use until after you had direct experience.

Buying tools twice or three or four times is just "the cost of doing business." You can't make an informed decision until you have experience.

[brudgers]

Yes and buying the expensive item is not insurance against losing it, or breaking it, or it not being particularly useful. That’s before the possibility of buying the expensive version used…or the expensive item not being more robust.

On top of that, the canon of fine objects includes careful use and high maintenance…I know a guy who took offense at the suggestion he could drive his 911s in the rain.

And of course, you can buy a $45 keyboard twice and have a backup or one for your other computer, etc. Likewise, you can replace a $45 keyboard at 7pm on Tuesday at your local Walmart.