3 ms·

I feel like if I was alive and working 60 years ago I would have been saying the same thing about mechanics, construction, and analog electronics. But really it

I feel like if I was alive and working 60 years ago I would have been saying the same thing about mechanics, construction, and analog electronics. But really it doesn't matter for most jobs. Knowing how things work underneath is needed if you are forming your own business and products from the ground up, it is only slightly useful if you are working for somebody else, and as time goes on what monetary value there is left in that knowledge will evaporate to nothing for 98% of workers.

ben_w 3y ago
My dad was absolutely saying the same things 25 years ago about integrated circuits in e.g. car engines.
zelphirkalt 3y ago
Yet, someone has to know this stuff, or be capable of learning how it works and as a consequence be able to work on those arcane layers. Otherwise we stand no chance of finding new, more general abstractions to construct a stack of fewer abstractions in total. We probably won't get to fewer abstractions, but to avoid making the problem get worse even faster, we need some counterweight.
mfuzzey 3y ago
Sure most people don't need to understand this stuff. But the problem today is that very few people, in tech not just the general public, understand the low level stuff, especially among new people entering the field. Furthermore software abstractions tend to be far more leaky than abstractions in the physical world you mention. And when they leak you need someone who understands what's going on under the hood. Actually I don't think this knowledge is most important for people forming their own businesses at all - they have many other problems to sort out. But I think it absolutely is valuable working for someone else. These people are the "goto guys" and, ultimately, a "technical insurance policy" for the companies they work for. A company producing tech products without at least a few people on staff who can dig into and fix almost anything is in a difficult position ultimately.
worksonmine 3y ago
There are some things you need to know though. For example most devs today "know" Docker, but very few realize that it opens the exposed ports on the host firewall. Exposing a port for another service to access internally is intuitively safe, until you look at the box and realize that same port was opened to the internet. Convenient thought the docker devs, but touching something so important without feedback is reckless. That's an abstraction that absolutely shouldn't be there, too many devs don't RTFM.

ben_w 3y ago

My dad was absolutely saying the same things 25 years ago about integrated circuits in e.g. car engines.

zelphirkalt 3y ago

Yet, someone has to know this stuff, or be capable of learning how it works and as a consequence be able to work on those arcane layers. Otherwise we stand no chance of finding new, more general abstractions to construct a stack of fewer abstractions in total. We probably won't get to fewer abstractions, but to avoid making the problem get worse even faster, we need some counterweight.

mfuzzey 3y ago

Sure most people don't need to understand this stuff. But the problem today is that very few people, in tech not just the general public, understand the low level stuff, especially among new people entering the field. Furthermore software abstractions tend to be far more leaky than abstractions in the physical world you mention. And when they leak you need someone who understands what's going on under the hood. Actually I don't think this knowledge is most important for people forming their own businesses at all - they have many other problems to sort out. But I think it absolutely is valuable working for someone else. These people are the "goto guys" and, ultimately, a "technical insurance policy" for the companies they work for. A company producing tech products without at least a few people on staff who can dig into and fix almost anything is in a difficult position ultimately.

worksonmine 3y ago

There are some things you need to know though. For example most devs today "know" Docker, but very few realize that it opens the exposed ports on the host firewall. Exposing a port for another service to access internally is intuitively safe, until you look at the box and realize that same port was opened to the internet. Convenient thought the docker devs, but touching something so important without feedback is reckless. That's an abstraction that absolutely shouldn't be there, too many devs don't RTFM.