You make reasoned points, and I respect that. However, I disagree somewhat with your assessment.
First, there is such a thing as saving. If a potential dev saved $100 / month it would only take 1½ years to get a pretty decent machine. I know people like to pretend you can't save that much a month, but those people generally either don't look at how much they blow on stuff like fast food or they don't have the will to cut things that are nice to have but they don't actually need. I'm not judging a specific person, but let's be real: do you actually need a subscription to Spotify? Do you really need a new iPhone every year? Only each individual can determine that, but in my experience (including with my own finances in the past) it's very easy to let your money get swallowed up when it doesn't need to be.
Second, any venture requires risk. You shouldn't be surprised when things go belly up at some point in the future. If you can't control your existing circumstances, your just asking to be at the mercy of something major happening later on. I didn't recommend sinking "all" one's money into a new rig. I only said maybe the order should be to buy the rig before making a serious go at indie development. Hoping as an indie developer you make it big enough to replace your computer parts is obviously an option, but the likelihood is high that you don't gain enough momentum for at least a couple of years. Can your GPU make it that long without melting down? Again, these are personal decisions, but I think far too many say they'll replace things later. Then, when later arrives, they can't afford to replace even the machine they already had. You can sink in that bog of quicksand fast.
I was only offering my own thoughts, something that should at least be considered. Maybe it will work for one person and not for another. I wasn't trying to claim it was what ever dev should do in their own situation. I don't know people's personal lives to be able to make that type of assessment. But being wholly unwilling even to think about other options is actually foolish.
