4 ms·

Just playing devil's advocate here... why is this such a "crucial" concept, for someone who is using a higher level language (like Python or Ruby)? If 99% of w

Just playing devil's advocate here... why is this such a "crucial" concept, for someone who is using a higher level language (like Python or Ruby)? If 99% of what that person does is gluing together APIs and software modules, and they can see their memory usages are well within range, why does it matter?

pq0ak2nnd 8y ago
true. it's like interior decorator vs. interior designer if you're just going to move couches around and put down throw pillows, who cares about a solid foundation of design fundamentals and architectural psychology.
- mturmon 8y ago
  Yep. In truth, one can almost never win the argument of, "...but do I really need to know this?" But people should be aware that knowing fundamental things provides insight and advantages.
  - greenshackle2 8y ago
    For sure, but there are diminishing returns. My rule of thumb is that understanding two levels of abstraction below whatever you're doing is usually worth it.
- gowld 8y ago
  It's also like fluid dynamicist vs quantum physicists. If you're just going to move oil around and put down differential equations, who cares about a solid foundation of quantum gravity and chromodynamics.
danso 8y ago
I can’t make a thorough argument, but u/flyinglizard (in a comment adjacent to mine) mentioned what I was thinking: Ruby/Python almost entirely abstracts the concept of pointers, references, and memory. For beginners and intermediates, it’s not a big deal until you get mutable data structures like lists and dicts. When I learned CS, we were taught C/C++ first, and I remember the concept of mutability and object identity being not at all difficult. Without being able to refer to fundamental structures and concepts, I usually just exclusively teach students non-mutable patterns (e.g. list.sorted vs list.sort), while pushing them to become much proactive at inspecting and debugging.
maxxxxx 8y ago
Compared to people who know only high level languages I have noticed that with my C background I can figure out performance problems better because I have an idea how the higher languages are implemented.
Karrot_Kream 8y ago
Because we haven't figured out a large body of non-leaky or resilient abstractions yet. If a higher level construct was indeed a true superset of lower level functionality, or was robust enough to be applied to a wide variety of situations, then it would be okay. Right now in web software, because we optimize for development velocity so heavily, the tools a smaller product would reach for are fundamentally different from the tools a very high load service would. Until we can come up with a set of robust higher level abstractions that scale well (or better than they currently do) then we'll be stuck where we're at. Thread pools will saturate, GC will stutter, sockets will timeout, and all sorts of stuff that higher level abstractions do not capture well. (I kept this post vague but can offer concrete examples of you'd like)

pq0ak2nnd 8y ago

true. it's like interior decorator vs. interior designer if you're just going to move couches around and put down throw pillows, who cares about a solid foundation of design fundamentals and architectural psychology.

mturmon 8y ago
Yep. In truth, one can almost never win the argument of, "...but do I really need to know this?" But people should be aware that knowing fundamental things provides insight and advantages.
- greenshackle2 8y ago
  For sure, but there are diminishing returns. My rule of thumb is that understanding two levels of abstraction below whatever you're doing is usually worth it.
gowld 8y ago
It's also like fluid dynamicist vs quantum physicists. If you're just going to move oil around and put down differential equations, who cares about a solid foundation of quantum gravity and chromodynamics.

danso 8y ago

I can’t make a thorough argument, but u/flyinglizard (in a comment adjacent to mine) mentioned what I was thinking: Ruby/Python almost entirely abstracts the concept of pointers, references, and memory. For beginners and intermediates, it’s not a big deal until you get mutable data structures like lists and dicts. When I learned CS, we were taught C/C++ first, and I remember the concept of mutability and object identity being not at all difficult. Without being able to refer to fundamental structures and concepts, I usually just exclusively teach students non-mutable patterns (e.g. list.sorted vs list.sort), while pushing them to become much proactive at inspecting and debugging.

maxxxxx 8y ago

Compared to people who know only high level languages I have noticed that with my C background I can figure out performance problems better because I have an idea how the higher languages are implemented.

Karrot_Kream 8y ago

Because we haven't figured out a large body of non-leaky or resilient abstractions yet. If a higher level construct was indeed a true superset of lower level functionality, or was robust enough to be applied to a wide variety of situations, then it would be okay. Right now in web software, because we optimize for development velocity so heavily, the tools a smaller product would reach for are fundamentally different from the tools a very high load service would. Until we can come up with a set of robust higher level abstractions that scale well (or better than they currently do) then we'll be stuck where we're at. Thread pools will saturate, GC will stutter, sockets will timeout, and all sorts of stuff that higher level abstractions do not capture well. (I kept this post vague but can offer concrete examples of you'd like)