[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.