"Carbon steel is soft" - uh, most metal is probably going to be soft if it isn't heat treated, but carbon steel can become so brittle it shatters when you tap i

"Carbon steel is soft" - uh, most metal is probably going to be soft if it isn't heat treated, but carbon steel can become so brittle it shatters when you tap it. And Damascus steel isn't particularly good. It's mainly an artsy gimmick. But that's not to say you can't still have a strong, sharp Damascus blade. The visual has nothing to do with how the knife performs. He's right that you only need three knives: A large thick chef's knife, a smaller thin knife, and a generic serrated knife. None of these have to be good at all to cook with, but you will enjoy cooking more with purpose-made cutlery made of hard steel that you can simply re-hone to keep them working efficiently. A "good" stainless steel is often perfectly fine, but most often it will not stay as sharp as long. But if you're new to culinary knives, you should not go out and buy good knives. You should buy a pack of a bunch of different looking shit knives for about $30-40, the heavier the better. Practice cooking with them. You will notice some knives are annoying with certain cutting techniques, and how your shit knives may actually be too shitty to practice certain techniques. Hopefully you will learn to take care of your knives, what kind of cutting surfaces to use, how to hone or sharpen them, etc so when you go to buy a good set, you get what you actually want to use. After cooking with shit knives, you may learn you don't mind knives that can't cut a tomato without poking through the skin first and then slicing from the meaty part. But that's basically how you choose a knife - whether your knives are sharp or will stay sharp, whether they "feel right", how much you care about maintenance. If you don't care about any of this, use shit knives. If you are a dork like me, make your own knife. If you do want a good knife but don't want to spend the money, learn about good manufacturers of older knives and look for some at a local flea market. You may only need to sharpen it or maybe put a new edge on it, both of which are easy once practiced. No need to spend $150 on a knife you can find online or in a flea market for $25.