Comment by 4death4

I used to work on an ML research team. In addition to what the author mentions, there is an entirely separate issue: whether or not what you're attempting to do is possible with the approach you've chosen. Consider making an iOS app. For the most part, an experienced software engineer can tell you if making a given app is possible, and they'll have a relatively clear idea about the steps required to realize the idea. Compare this to ML problems: you don't often know if your data or model selection can produce the results you want. On top of that, you don't know if you're not getting results because of a bug (i.e. the debugging issues mentioned by the author) or if because you have fundamental blocks elsewhere in the pipeline.