It feels depressing until you realize the set of all things that you can DIY that you can't buy is infinite. Factor in that the things you can buy are extremely

It feels depressing until you realize the set of all things that you can DIY that you can't buy is infinite. Factor in that the things you can buy are extremely cheap when you factor in your time, due to mass production. So it doesn't make sense to spend time building something you can just buy. I just think it's a good principle that someone older than me shared with me a long time ago, in an electronics hobby store that no longer exists, when I was buying parts to build a bench power supply, though I had to discover some reasons the hard way. I thought they were being an ass at the time, so I plowed ahead with my project, and realized halfway thru that this project was pretty dumb and I should have just bought one and moved on to a better more interesting project.