Building and using it sparks joy.
I also am irked by people who buy and use amazing things and display said amazing thing from a position of “I am amazing therefore I need amazing things” or vice versa. I dunno, it seems really inauthentic or something. I’m getting a little of that vibe from this article but OTOH I’m also getting a lot of the “Building and using great instruments sparks joy” vibe too and I think the former may just be coming across by virtue of writing a blog post to share the latter so, oh well :)
That being said, if you take a software developer's CPU away what are they supposed to do - build their own foundry? Same for electrical engineers - can they really be faulted for an inability to design a modern chip without the help of extensive tooling?
(I'm certainly nowhere near being capable of implementing my own C++ compiler from scratch.)
It's not that bad. A couple months and you're good to go.
Probably the main philosophical disagreement I have with the article is summed up by (and probably the rest of the article was tainted by) the opening line:
> I was searching around for a quote along the lines of you only being as good as the tools you use
I personally (fully aware it's a quirk of mine that others don't seem to share) feel that fancy tools are often a crutch for a lack of understanding.
Granted, this guy looks to have a long list of accomplishments, so good for him for wanting a fancy set up. If it brings him joy then more power to him.