I have a similar rule of thumb for learning to code: never buy educational content (video, course, books) if you can't evaluate the value of that content by yourself. The outcome is learning a lot from free content (there is a lot of it out there for software development) until you know precisely what do you need to learn in more depth and which is the resource that has it.
The difference is that in software development educational resources, the cheapest ones are not necessarily the worst. There is almost no correlation between quality and price in most topics. So the phrasing would be more like "Start with the cheapest resource for the topic" (which most of the time means free).
I used this principle myself while learning to code and it worked out great. I could get a good first job as a frontend developer without buying any learning resource (freecodecamp.org + official documentation + posts/tutorials + stack overflow).
If you can't evaluate for yourself if something is worth buying, and have to trust another person of its value, you are not ready for that content yet.
The difference is that in software development educational resources, the cheapest ones are not necessarily the worst. There is almost no correlation between quality and price in most topics. So the phrasing would be more like "Start with the cheapest resource for the topic" (which most of the time means free).
I used this principle myself while learning to code and it worked out great. I could get a good first job as a frontend developer without buying any learning resource (freecodecamp.org + official documentation + posts/tutorials + stack overflow).
If you can't evaluate for yourself if something is worth buying, and have to trust another person of its value, you are not ready for that content yet.