4 ms·

There are still plenty of people out there that can work at the low level, and young people that can work at low level too. I compare it to the beginning of CS

There are still plenty of people out there that can work at the low level, and young people that can work at low level too. I compare it to the beginning of CS to now. In the 70's a computer scientist was familiar with electronics, and a lot of very low level things that would be considered EE now. This was needed in the days where machines were bespoke, and coding was very bare metal. But then people built standardized hardware, and developed standard operating systems that allowed people to work with higher level languages and trust the low level to others. This is still the case. I am familiar with assembly and X86 but I never work with it. I do not need to, there are people that work on that. That does not impair me, it is just that the world of tech has grown much larger and there is a lot to know where nobody can know it all. Some have the feeling that if you cannot work with assembly or write compilers or device drivers you somehow don't have your chops. The skills that are "few and far between" are those wanting to work on a unique system where that knowledge is not directly applicable to today's less bespoke technologies.

varjag 11y ago
> That does not impair me Not understanding it, however, would perhaps have impaired you in the long run. Low level programming is easier than many suggest, but at the same time more essential than many would admit. It's not that you have to practice it, but understanding it is important. E.g. I can't help but be alerted of career programmers who have no grasp of basic things like memory pointers. This surprisingly often goes together with not understanding high level concepts like asymptotic complexity, explained away with the same argument that "you don't need it in real life, just call sort()". It's like a plumber who seems to follow the build code doing all pipework inclinations by the book, but fails to recognize the general principle that water flows downwards. It's painting by numbers at best, and religious practice at worst. There is no room for magic if one is serious about their trade.

varjag 11y ago

> That does not impair me Not understanding it, however, would perhaps have impaired you in the long run. Low level programming is easier than many suggest, but at the same time more essential than many would admit. It's not that you have to practice it, but understanding it is important. E.g. I can't help but be alerted of career programmers who have no grasp of basic things like memory pointers. This surprisingly often goes together with not understanding high level concepts like asymptotic complexity, explained away with the same argument that "you don't need it in real life, just call sort()". It's like a plumber who seems to follow the build code doing all pipework inclinations by the book, but fails to recognize the general principle that water flows downwards. It's painting by numbers at best, and religious practice at worst. There is no room for magic if one is serious about their trade.