The lower you go the more you will know. But seriously, there is a lot of upside knowing exactly whats going on in hardware when you are pushing bits around at

The lower you go the more you will know. But seriously, there is a lot of upside knowing exactly whats going on in hardware when you are pushing bits around at a high level. A downside is you waste time writing at a level where a compiler/interpreter would generate much better code for you.