Pretty strong disagree with your take (though seems like you end with "this is a bad path with no viable alternatives"?). Laying out the breadboards and wiring this has frustrations but that's part of the experience. Same with the design choices; one of the most valuable things my most-digital of minds learned was that you can never escape the analog world completely. I don't think you should be looking for cheap and efficient in this realm, but what I did to source everything was make a big ali express order about 3 months before I planned to tackle this (over a Christmas/winter break), sometimes ordering the same part from multiple suppliers, and then forgot about it, until the packages started to trickle in. You probably already have a lot of the basics, so you can do this for < $200 pretty easily. Meanwhile I completed the NAND to Tetris project, which was very complimentary. I didn't find any parts particularly hard to source and have more basic gates than all ever use.

You are free to disagree. The project took me way longer than I expected, and while it (building the whole thing) was fun, the experience barely helped deepen my knowledge of electronics or computers -- the videos themselves were already very educational. I wouldn't have done it if I had a better idea of what I was getting into, but anyone can make a different choice if they value their time and money differently.