Agreed. It's hard to learn unless you have access to quite high end hardware, and even paying by the hour is expensive. There's a low ceiling on what you can learn without doing training runs.

You can however learn everything you need to know to get on the career ladder as a software engineer on a regular home PC.

While the topic here is narrow, the concept is broader.

Do you take the first step or rule it out because you don’t yet see the complete picture.

As a teenager I never hesitated to try things out. As a young adult I wanted the whole picture. Now I’m back to playing / trying things out. I kinda wish I’d not given it up. PG being a bit older and reminiscing - I bet he’s in that bucket too, whereas someone trying to establish themselves professionally probably (aka me early 20s) wants to see the path.