In Rails-land there is a term DHH used (not sure if he coined it) called "conceptual compression". All of these OS, compiler, run-times, emulators, etc. have b

In Rails-land there is a term DHH used (not sure if he coined it) called "conceptual compression". All of these OS, compiler, run-times, emulators, etc. have been conceptually compressed down so far that a typical application writer doesn't have to dive deep into those to solve problems. In fact, in Rails you might not get past the ORM much into actual SQL. You can spend an entire career solving good business problems writing CRUD and related apps. I would consider myself in older generation, having graduated around when Google was operating in a garage. I took assembly programming and played with circuit boards and logic gates in college. I don't have specialized knowledge of OS writing or compilers but I have enough from a CompSci degree (or maybe it was building gaming rigs in the days of dealing with IRQs) to know if I see issues in those areas. A lot of the concepts in computing haven't changed in ages, yet the buzzwords have. I would only suggest diving into those areas deeply if you are looking for a job/career change. I say career because working on writing HW drivers or other things is almost a different career than writing business apps since the job opportunities will be different. I've run into folks that got "stuck" into deeply specific areas of computing and have no buzzwords on their resume. They got laid off and are having a hard time finding work.