I love high-level languages and think they've had a great democratizing effect that lets people across a wide array of backgrounds be reasonably productive with

I love high-level languages and think they've had a great democratizing effect that lets people across a wide array of backgrounds be reasonably productive without a ton of background knowledge. But, the underlying computer isn't magic. In many ways, it's pretty dumb. I suspect if you spent a bit of time looking at a system architecture, a lot of things would click into place. Early in studies, I couldn't really wrap my head around pointers. I mean, I knew what they were and how I needed to work with them, but they just seemed like a weird abstraction. A short intro to assembly and later on, a computer architecture class, cleared that all up. Everyone learns differently, so my experience likely isn't applicable. But, for me, no longer treating the CPU as a black box helped me get a much better mental model of lower-level languages. And I think I'm a better high-level developer for it.