4 ms·

> Why dont people get the basics of the parts of the tool not saying that you are incorrect, but "basic" is relative. To understand Linux networking should we

> Why dont people get the basics of the parts of the tool not saying that you are incorrect, but "basic" is relative. To understand Linux networking should we also understand basic linux kernel ? or basic chemistry to understand what happens inside the cpu ? We should all stand on the (stable) shoulders of giants. I would call that good (also relative indeed) documentation that abstract us from the level below/above.

jgust 7y ago
To bake a pie, you must first invent the universe.
antocv 7y ago
If you are working on fabs, yes you should understand basic chemistry. If you are working on distributed stateless cloud-agnostic applications, yes you should understand both the networking and kernel of your OS on which said applications run. Even if there is an abstraction layer with nice boundaries and well documented, you can still not ignore the layer below and pretend its raining. When you are making a web app (for advertising purposes since this is HN), can you ignore understanding HTTP and TCP and IP? Would you hire a web-application developer who didnt know how to setup a web-server or load-balance his app?
- Rychard 7y ago
  > Would you hire a web-application developer who didnt know how to setup a web-server or load-balance his app? My company does this all the time. In fact, in the absence of our step-by-step guides, I would estimate that maybe 5% of the development team could successfully configure their local web server on their own.
orev 7y ago
Understanding the fundamentals is indeed very important. Not that you need to be an expert in it, but knowing basic concepts is extremely helpful for troubleshooting, and I would argue is the thing that makes the difference between a junior and senior person. I don’t use most of the fundamentals I learned in school directly on a daily basis, but I do use them almost every day to inform the decisions I make about higher level things.

jgust 7y ago

To bake a pie, you must first invent the universe.

antocv 7y ago

If you are working on fabs, yes you should understand basic chemistry. If you are working on distributed stateless cloud-agnostic applications, yes you should understand both the networking and kernel of your OS on which said applications run. Even if there is an abstraction layer with nice boundaries and well documented, you can still not ignore the layer below and pretend its raining. When you are making a web app (for advertising purposes since this is HN), can you ignore understanding HTTP and TCP and IP? Would you hire a web-application developer who didnt know how to setup a web-server or load-balance his app?

Rychard 7y ago
> Would you hire a web-application developer who didnt know how to setup a web-server or load-balance his app? My company does this all the time. In fact, in the absence of our step-by-step guides, I would estimate that maybe 5% of the development team could successfully configure their local web server on their own.

orev 7y ago

Understanding the fundamentals is indeed very important. Not that you need to be an expert in it, but knowing basic concepts is extremely helpful for troubleshooting, and I would argue is the thing that makes the difference between a junior and senior person. I don’t use most of the fundamentals I learned in school directly on a daily basis, but I do use them almost every day to inform the decisions I make about higher level things.