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What's with the false dichotomy? I personally agree with you that knowing lower level things is incredibly helpful to every single good developer, even those wh
by filoleg 9y ago
What's with the false dichotomy? I personally agree with you that knowing lower level things is incredibly helpful to every single good developer, even those who don't touch anything lower than Javascript on daily basis. However, I totally disagree that those computing concepts should be taught in an intro class, when the student not only has to struggle with learning basic computing concepts, but also with memory management and low level quirks that even competent established developers struggle with sometimes.
Tl;dr: agreed that low level computing fundamentals are helpful to every developer, disagreed that intro classes are the right place for them.
- oso2k 9y agoThe reason is that not teaching those lower-level concepts continues to allow them to be magical. No one expects to get into Reference Counting vs. Tracing Garbage Collectors, but understanding that lower-level construct exists partially removes the mystery of the underlying mechanics. An analogous example would be Cars: you press the accelerator and gas gets sucked in from the gas tank to the engine. Most people don't care to understand if it is EFI or Carburetor.
- filoleg 9y agoMy point was that even though those things are very useful to know, I don't think that an intro class is a good place for that. Your reply didn't address that at all, and instead brought an analogy that works within the frame of my argument as well.