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Fascinating. There’s always a loss of lower-level knowledge when we introduce abstractions. Yet “we stand upon the shoulders of giants,” it’s the layers of abst
by burlesona 4y ago
Fascinating. There’s always a loss of lower-level knowledge when we introduce abstractions. Yet “we stand upon the shoulders of giants,” it’s the layers of abstractions underneath us that we don’t have to understand or even think about that free our minds to compose ever more amazing technology on top. Still, progression from the layer that you know and love to the next that paves over it is bittersweet.
- falcolas 4y agoPhilosophizing a little bit (and in agreement with one of the quotes in the conclusion), I think the bittersweet feelings are precisely because very few people try to understand the box, because they consider it to be a black box. But it's often a white box in reality. When the electric push buttons came out, you could trace the wires and usually see the mechanisms which were being triggered. The doorbell, for example. But curiosity rarely seems to push us in that direction, it seems.
- duxup 4y ago>we don’t have to understand or even think about But also don't have to make all the same mistakes other folks did / toil our way through to the ... potentially same endpoint. At least as far as code goes I've gone through plenty of experiments that go: "Man I don't need this complex chunk of software, let me just try ..." "Ok now I understand why that chunk of software is the way it is... and it's better than mine... I'll use that." Good learning experience! But do that enough and you just spin your wheels endlessly.
- eternityforest 4y agoI don't do that at all these days. It's almost a guarantee that I'll eventually use the big complex thing, so I rarely even consider trying anything else if it's a project that actually matters.