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>In practice? Some tools are just worth spending the money on upfront, inferior tools will often lead to frustration and failure early on. no, you can't underm

>In practice? Some tools are just worth spending the money on upfront, inferior tools will often lead to frustration and failure early on. no, you can't undermine the idea with this trick. For example (grabbing examples from other comments in this thread), while an expensive soldering iron might be much better than a cheap one, there is no way you know before you start whether you're going to be soldering a lot. I know how to solder, I've soldered a lot since I was about 13, and I can solder just fine with a crappy soldering iron (just like good pizza makers can use a primitive wood fired oven) but after I learned to wire-wrap, I put down my soldering iron almost for good... and does wire-wrapping even exist any more? If I wanted to take it up again, I'd find antique wirewrapping tools before I'd torture myself with soldering anything. All of which is my way to say, if I can't predict how much soldering I'm going to do, then no beginner can predict whether an expensive soldering iron is what they need or not. Maybe if you went out and geared up with the most expensive technical mountain climbing gear, you could climb Everest on your first try, and you could then make the case that had you bought the cheap stuff you would have been discouraged by frostbite. But that's just not a good plan.

detaro 4y ago
There is a vast difference between "went out and geared up with the most expensive" and "spend ~$30 more to go from cheap crap to something baseline competent" (e.g. while the article author says "ultra-cheap" about his linked choice, it's actually more in that range). And nowadays its quite easy to figure out if that's the case for what you are planning to buy, as long as it is a somewhat mainstream topic. And then make a somewhat informed choice. Irons are also not really getting used up, so if you truly follow the "replace if it breaks" rule you're potentially using crap a loooong time.
krapht 4y ago
I know so many people who get frustrated with hobby tools and then quit the hobby, when if they would've bought something decent to start off with, might've kept interest. The price differential is a lot less if you buy used, but quality tooling. This tooling is fully depreciated, and you can turn around and sell it for what you paid for it as long as it's still in working order. To bring it around to programming, imagine trying to debug code in GEdit+Terminal vs having the latest and greatest Jetbrains IDE to help out (ignoring the fact that the community editions are actually pretty functional - let's time travel back 20 years when you had to pay for VS or Borland). One is way more frustrating than the other; one is way more likely to lose motivation. Or soldering - avoid the cheapest harbor freight iron, and EBay a used Weller for $50+shipping. If you never solder again pass it on and you're out the shipping costs. Weller irons have been and always will be around $50~$60 used.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  far far more people quit hobbies period, and all those people would have wasted a lot of money gearing up.
sokoloff 4y ago
The problem with wire-wrapping is that it’s so far from standard practice now (because of the migration to mostly SMD) that it’s not going to be near as easy to prototype with wire-wrapping exclusively as it used to be, and won’t even be easy to find the square-post sockets as when it was a common means of prototyping.
invalidator 4y ago
> does wire-wrapping even exist any more? Yes! I gave it a try a few years ago and I am impressed. It's faster, denser, and cleaner than soldering wires onto perfboard. Being able to rework by just unwinding a wire is great. I don't use proper wirewrap sockets, but it seems reliable for one-off hobby prototypes.

detaro 4y ago

There is a vast difference between "went out and geared up with the most expensive" and "spend ~$30 more to go from cheap crap to something baseline competent" (e.g. while the article author says "ultra-cheap" about his linked choice, it's actually more in that range). And nowadays its quite easy to figure out if that's the case for what you are planning to buy, as long as it is a somewhat mainstream topic. And then make a somewhat informed choice. Irons are also not really getting used up, so if you truly follow the "replace if it breaks" rule you're potentially using crap a loooong time.

krapht 4y ago

I know so many people who get frustrated with hobby tools and then quit the hobby, when if they would've bought something decent to start off with, might've kept interest. The price differential is a lot less if you buy used, but quality tooling. This tooling is fully depreciated, and you can turn around and sell it for what you paid for it as long as it's still in working order. To bring it around to programming, imagine trying to debug code in GEdit+Terminal vs having the latest and greatest Jetbrains IDE to help out (ignoring the fact that the community editions are actually pretty functional - let's time travel back 20 years when you had to pay for VS or Borland). One is way more frustrating than the other; one is way more likely to lose motivation. Or soldering - avoid the cheapest harbor freight iron, and EBay a used Weller for $50+shipping. If you never solder again pass it on and you're out the shipping costs. Weller irons have been and always will be around $50~$60 used.

fsckboy 4y ago
far far more people quit hobbies period, and all those people would have wasted a lot of money gearing up.

sokoloff 4y ago

The problem with wire-wrapping is that it’s so far from standard practice now (because of the migration to mostly SMD) that it’s not going to be near as easy to prototype with wire-wrapping exclusively as it used to be, and won’t even be easy to find the square-post sockets as when it was a common means of prototyping.

invalidator 4y ago

> does wire-wrapping even exist any more? Yes! I gave it a try a few years ago and I am impressed. It's faster, denser, and cleaner than soldering wires onto perfboard. Being able to rework by just unwinding a wire is great. I don't use proper wirewrap sockets, but it seems reliable for one-off hobby prototypes.