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> spending a decade working with a low level programming language before you jump into high level programming language is simply not an option. Nobody said tha

> spending a decade working with a low level programming language before you jump into high level programming language is simply not an option. Nobody said that. But spending a week is definitely an option to all programmers, and many would benefit from it.

cjalmeida 3y ago
You can get ahead very far with a 16h free course on kernel development https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/a-beginners-guide-to-linux-kernel-development-lfd103/ https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/a-beginners-gu... A motivated person can run through it in a couple weeks while working a day job.
- treadmill 3y ago
  Ugh, why do they want me to register to access a free course.
  - acheron 3y ago
    Data collection, of course.
arnaudvalette 3y ago
Do you have any ressources to share ? I am a self taught developer, I do stuff at my level (typescript, lisp), also because when you work alone, such high level languages allow you to express things nicely and fast. I kinda know how a cpu works, I understand what is going on when you perform some bare metal programming, but I never barely went down the rabbit hole and performed some low level stuff. I'm in the situation where I don't know what I should learn to be on par with graduates/undergraduates students. I am searching ressources about networking, operating systems, or anything that could enhance my proximity with low level stuff.
- danielvaughn 3y ago
  I'm also self-taught. I've been doing it since (roughly) 2009, and like many others I started at the highest level of abstraction with front-end web dev. I've worked with some mid-level languages like Objective-C and Java, but like you I've never really dug deeper than that. I know this is tired and cliche at this point, but literally this week I sat down with ChatGPT and asked it to teach me how to write WAT (web assembly text format) so I could understand how memory is managed at a really low level (but not so low that I risk crashing my computer). It turned out to be super valuable. This is where AI shines for me - I can ask it any question that pops into my head, and also validate whether what it's telling me is true by running the code and seeing whether it works. It was amazing. If you're curious, I'm fine sharing a link to the chat: https://chat.openai.com/share/583bf23b-b43d-4566-956a-e92b6fb1750c https://chat.openai.com/share/583bf23b-b43d-4566-956a-e92b6f...
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Very cool! Have you already taken the time to cross-examine the output to ensure it's hallucination-free?
    - danielvaughn 3y ago
      Yeah I was running all the code to validate what it was giving me, but I also try to subtly prompt it to repeat itself so I can see if it’s being consistent. I’m sure it’s not error-free, but the speed of learning makes up for it IMO. Like I’d been struggling for a while to learn tree-sitter, the documentation is overwhelming. I had a chat with AI and got a working solution for my problem in probably 4-6 hours, and now I can write tree sitter grammars without help. It’s really incredible.
- criddell 3y ago
  For very foundational stuff, Charles Petzold has put out some great books. His book Code is fantastic. He starts at simple battery and lightbulb circuits and builds and builds towards a simple CPU. He also wrote The Annotated Turing which is a breakdown of Alan Turing seminal paper and you only need high school math to get through it. When I was in school my favorite course was compiler design and we used Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (aka the dragon book). It’s one of the best textbooks I’ve used but that was 30 years ago. There might be something better now. Understanding parsers and lexers and (especially) state machines is something that will serve you well.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
There is a lot of beginner level resources. But there is very few or any resources to teach you the things you learn doing the job for a decade.

cjalmeida 3y ago

You can get ahead very far with a 16h free course on kernel development https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/a-beginners-guide-to-linux-kernel-development-lfd103/ https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/a-beginners-gu... A motivated person can run through it in a couple weeks while working a day job.

treadmill 3y ago
Ugh, why do they want me to register to access a free course.
- acheron 3y ago
  Data collection, of course.

arnaudvalette 3y ago

Do you have any ressources to share ? I am a self taught developer, I do stuff at my level (typescript, lisp), also because when you work alone, such high level languages allow you to express things nicely and fast. I kinda know how a cpu works, I understand what is going on when you perform some bare metal programming, but I never barely went down the rabbit hole and performed some low level stuff. I'm in the situation where I don't know what I should learn to be on par with graduates/undergraduates students. I am searching ressources about networking, operating systems, or anything that could enhance my proximity with low level stuff.

danielvaughn 3y ago
I'm also self-taught. I've been doing it since (roughly) 2009, and like many others I started at the highest level of abstraction with front-end web dev. I've worked with some mid-level languages like Objective-C and Java, but like you I've never really dug deeper than that. I know this is tired and cliche at this point, but literally this week I sat down with ChatGPT and asked it to teach me how to write WAT (web assembly text format) so I could understand how memory is managed at a really low level (but not so low that I risk crashing my computer). It turned out to be super valuable. This is where AI shines for me - I can ask it any question that pops into my head, and also validate whether what it's telling me is true by running the code and seeing whether it works. It was amazing. If you're curious, I'm fine sharing a link to the chat: https://chat.openai.com/share/583bf23b-b43d-4566-956a-e92b6fb1750c https://chat.openai.com/share/583bf23b-b43d-4566-956a-e92b6f...
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Very cool! Have you already taken the time to cross-examine the output to ensure it's hallucination-free?
  - danielvaughn 3y ago
    Yeah I was running all the code to validate what it was giving me, but I also try to subtly prompt it to repeat itself so I can see if it’s being consistent. I’m sure it’s not error-free, but the speed of learning makes up for it IMO. Like I’d been struggling for a while to learn tree-sitter, the documentation is overwhelming. I had a chat with AI and got a working solution for my problem in probably 4-6 hours, and now I can write tree sitter grammars without help. It’s really incredible.
criddell 3y ago
For very foundational stuff, Charles Petzold has put out some great books. His book Code is fantastic. He starts at simple battery and lightbulb circuits and builds and builds towards a simple CPU. He also wrote The Annotated Turing which is a breakdown of Alan Turing seminal paper and you only need high school math to get through it. When I was in school my favorite course was compiler design and we used Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (aka the dragon book). It’s one of the best textbooks I’ve used but that was 30 years ago. There might be something better now. Understanding parsers and lexers and (especially) state machines is something that will serve you well.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

There is a lot of beginner level resources. But there is very few or any resources to teach you the things you learn doing the job for a decade.