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I assume this is sarcasm. Those who do not build upon the achievements of others are far less likely to reach any new heights. It's good to remember what we t

by blunte 9y ago

I assume this is sarcasm. Those who do not build upon the achievements of others are far less likely to reach any new heights. It's good to remember what we take for granted, and it's good to understand what is happening in layers below our concern. But pragmatically speaking, it's more valuable to know how to study and understand what's beneath us when we need rather than spending time proving ourselves just for the sake of proving. Do you still hunt, kill, and butcher your own meat?

ggambetta 9y ago
It's not sarcasm. I don't hunt/kill/butcher my food. But note that I wrote "is capable of doing", not "does".
ivanhoe 9y ago
There's a huge difference between using the prepackaged black box solution for the sake of efficiency (as everyone should), and not caring at all to understand even the basics of how it actually works. The later usually leaves one too intimidated to change anything and vulnerable to any unexpected situation. And things break all the time, you need to debug problems with tools and servers and run into all kinds of exotic issues. I once worked with a front-end dev who would restart his machine when he needed to reset a local web server, because "it's not his job" to learn a bit about using the command prompt. For me that is plain crazy attitude and it's not that rare...
vbezhenar 9y ago
If you're buying software, you don't need to understand how it was made. It's similar to meat. If you're producing meat, you have to butcher animals at some layer.
mathgladiator 9y ago
> Do you still hunt, kill, and butcher your own meat? Um, yes? it is not that hard. You do need land for it. I think reaching new heights requires a full understanding of how things work in general. Here is the thing with computers, it isn't that hard to get that knowledge. You just have to apply yourself and build a great deal of things over a career.
jnbiche 9y ago
> Do you still hunt, kill, and butcher your own meat? A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein

by blunte 9y ago

ggambetta 9y ago

It's not sarcasm. I don't hunt/kill/butcher my food. But note that I wrote "is capable of doing", not "does".

ivanhoe 9y ago

There's a huge difference between using the prepackaged black box solution for the sake of efficiency (as everyone should), and not caring at all to understand even the basics of how it actually works. The later usually leaves one too intimidated to change anything and vulnerable to any unexpected situation. And things break all the time, you need to debug problems with tools and servers and run into all kinds of exotic issues. I once worked with a front-end dev who would restart his machine when he needed to reset a local web server, because "it's not his job" to learn a bit about using the command prompt. For me that is plain crazy attitude and it's not that rare...

vbezhenar 9y ago

If you're buying software, you don't need to understand how it was made. It's similar to meat. If you're producing meat, you have to butcher animals at some layer.

mathgladiator 9y ago

> Do you still hunt, kill, and butcher your own meat? Um, yes? it is not that hard. You do need land for it. I think reaching new heights requires a full understanding of how things work in general. Here is the thing with computers, it isn't that hard to get that knowledge. You just have to apply yourself and build a great deal of things over a career.

jnbiche 9y ago

> Do you still hunt, kill, and butcher your own meat? A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein