Depends.

As a dev, a higher quality computer can make you more productive with increased compile times, etc.

I agree on the cars. I make my living mostly online so my hardware are my trade tools but yes, value loss is immense.

Fun fact, I stopped following the GPU arms race two years ago at least for gaming. Joined GeforceNow's cloud gaming very early and had a founders plan for 5/month for almost a year and a half. That's $90 in 18 months which makes it hard justifying spending $500-1200 every 2-3 years just to be able to play new gen games when they come out. Unless you're GPU miner I don't see the point any more in buying expensive GPU's at least not every couple of years.

My Android is also 4 years old. It's just a phone why would I buy a new one every year while this one is still working fine?