What is it with cooking that makes people under-appreciate the value of a good professional? It sounds like those clients who think programming is just pressing a few buttons.
That's actually a remarkably apt analogy, though not for the reasons you think.
As with cooking there's long been a concerted effort to teach everyone basic coding skills. Does that mean everyone will become paid software developers? No. But not everyone becomes a professional chef, either, and yet those basic skills come in pretty darn handy...
I appreciate a good chef as much as the next guy. The problem is that good chefs cost good money. Its simply not sustainable to eat from a gourmet chef every day, or even every week. Typically, people are going to go to a fast-food joint and that ain't too healthy or sustainable either.
The Soylent guy is claiming that his kitchen is "too costly", and yet eats out all the time. The contradiction is obvious.
I wasn't disagreeing with the lower cost, I was disagreeing with the claim that a home made dinner would probably taste better than something made by a chef. Clearly the author isn't talking about going to fast-food joints when he talks about "fine restaurants".
And nowhere does he say that he eats out every day, or even every week. What the Soylent guy eats every day is, presumably, Soylent. Which he claims is cheaper than home cooking (I won't argue either way) and that therefore he has more money to eat out when he wants to.
Upvoted because it's reasonable response not deserving of downvotes.
I do appreciate good chefs. It's probably side effect of the (cheap-ass) restaurants I go to, but I can cook at least as well as most of the people they have back in the kitchen. And I don't consider myself particularly skilled.
Or you could learn to cook and make a friend a probably better tasting lunch or dinner at substantially lower cost.