Should first impressions on a tight budget [v1]

I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts. This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.

Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately. This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.