If we're just thinking about it in terms of pure money optimization, that makes sense. Why spend 170,000 dollars when you could spend...nothing. But it also se

If we're just thinking about it in terms of pure money optimization, that makes sense. Why spend 170,000 dollars when you could spend...nothing. But it also seems the author actually enjoys building these tools. So it doesn't actually cost him anything. The work itself is a reward instead of a cost. I can't say spending 1700 hours making my own tools is what I really want for myself, but I guess different people are different (I'd hate to find out exactly how many hours I've spent editing ~/.emacs though, tbh...)