Bad tools also completely confound beginners and can make them think they aren't suited to or do not enjoy an activity that they might otherwise enjoy if they had better tools.

For example, I used to hate cooking, because I hated the prep work, it was very difficult for me. It turned out that my hand-me-down knives were very, very dull, a fact I didn't realize until I decided to invest in a nice set of Henckels. A sharp, quality knife makes the prep work easy and now I enjoy cooking much more than I used to. And now, whenever a friend tells me they want to learn to cook, my first recommendation is to make sure they have a good sharp set of knives, because for me, that made all the difference.

Absolutely. In this case, though, bad tools aren't the problem. The problem is that there are too many roughly equivalent tools, and many of them are very good, but there is a lot of arguing and navel gazing about which new one is the best to use.