system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
Life lesson: Good quality kitchen knives don't have to be expensive. 

A good purchase is: 

* Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef's Knife, 8 inch ($50)
* Victorinox Fibrox Paring knife, $10
* Random knife steel and dollar store / Chinatown sharpening stone (and learn to use it adequately well)

These will do almost as well as the top-of-the-line rich people knives, and last a lifetime. If you want to splurge, you can add a Fibrox offset bread knife. 

An alternative is to get restaurant / industrial knives. With proper maintenance, those also give great bang-for-the-buck. 

The fancy rich-person brands cost around $200 for the chef's knife (and similar markup everywhere else), and aren't much better. On the other hand, the difference to a dull, cheap knife is like night and day. And if you steel them before / after every use, and the rich person doesn't do the same to their $200 knife, yours will perform *a lot* better. 

If you look at videos on steeling and sharpening knives, it will look like advanced rocket science, and you'll be super-stressed out about doing it wrong. Don't worry about that. It's okay. Run the knife across the steel once or twice before/after each use to straighten the blade, and across a stone a few times when it dulls, and it will do fine. People all over the world did this before Youtube, and no one stressed about doing it wrong or doing it perfect.
gpt
I love my Victorinox 8"!