> just be careful not to overspend on your first iron. I first learned how to solder on an ultra-cheap hardware-store unit, and you should, too

I beg to differ.

I used to suck at soldering, and while I'm still no expert, swapping my €20 basic soldering iron for a serious Weller unit (starting at €150) changed everything. The Weller heats up almost instantly, goes up as high as you want, and stays at a constant temperature.

When using bad tools you don't know if it's you or the tools that are bad, and the path to improvement is unclear.

I 100% agree, the iron linked in the article is actually OK, but overpriced for what it is. The problem is that if you take the advice as written and go to Home Depot, you will end up with a frustrating piece of garbage and give up the hobby before long.

But fortunately today there are great, cheap tools. The $35 pinecil and T12 clones (as little as $25 if you can wait on shipping) are as good as $150 units from 10 years ago. I have a Hakko 888 and I haven't used it in years because a pinecil in my desk drawer is so much more convenient. It has enough juice for almost anything you'd find linked on hackernews or hackaday, and when I want to use it I just move a usb-c charging cable from my laptop to it for a while.

[1] Schematics: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil:_How_to_Repair#Schemati...

[2] IronOS: https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS