I think it's just that you don't need to be intimate with lower level details to deliver more value at higher levels like game and application dev. If your day

I think it's just that you don't need to be intimate with lower level details to deliver more value at higher levels like game and application dev. If your day to day involves "intimate knowledge with the CPU" and bumping program counters, I can rule out a lot of things that you probably aren't building, like a compelling iOS app or forum HTTP server, for example. Maybe you're doing impressive work on emulators or something though. But it's nothing to get pompous about just because other people don't share that interest. We too easily go off careening into a circlejerk.