"I don't know what to think when I meet engineers who know TCP/IP but don't quite understand how photons are transmitted over fiber." "I don't know what to thi

"I don't know what to think when I meet engineers who know TCP/IP but don't quite understand how photons are transmitted over fiber." "I don't know what to think when I meet engineers who know UNIX but don't quite understand assembly." What you quoted is tantamount to the lament of a dinosaur that has ample time to observe the meteor approaching and yet refuses to move away from the blast zone. Less facetiously: the history of progress in most domains, and especially computing, is in part a process of building atop successive layers of abstraction to increase productivity and unlock new value. Anyone who doesn't see this really hasn't been paying attention.