On the flip side, if you don't have the foundation it's entirely possible you won't get that much out of reading the paper. I enjoy reading papers on databases,

On the flip side, if you don't have the foundation it's entirely possible you won't get that much out of reading the paper. I enjoy reading papers on databases, but I also know that unless I start actively working on DB internals a lot of the lower level details of a paper will escape me. So essentially when I'm reading a paper, unless it's something I'm intimately familiar with, I stick to the high level details.