Why is "on the first try" so important? What's wrong with telling it your end goal and letting it figure out the exact right combo while you go off and work on something else?

Because I don’t want the earth to melt. Maybe if we’re all a bit more efficient we can postpone our doom for a bit.

That's also my experience. If it does not work on the first try, the model will likely continue to struggle with the problem, unless I babysit it.

So I prefer to dig through the source of truth, which also helps me build my mental model around the problem.