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I don't understand why you believe low-level "intrusive" programming and general software engineering are mutually exclusive. There is a big, open field for hig

I don't understand why you believe low-level "intrusive" programming and general software engineering are mutually exclusive. There is a big, open field for high quality, low-level software to be written well bearing good practices and practical decisions. 1. To be faif, these kinds of "hacking" projects aren't technically meant for learning software engineering in the context of a job, but they are really interesting and a treasure trove of new knowledge for anyone willing to put in the effort. I don't think it's a bad thing. A person can learn to be a good software developer and simultaneously have deep knowledge of the systems they are working with. 2. The goal of this project is not to research and implement some novel algorithm to replace existing works. The goal is to learn how things work. You are still going to use libraries, procedures and algorithms designed by other people and compile them into a cohesive system, it is merely the depth and complexity of the problem that makes it an interesting learning challenge. It's not about some absurd NIH philosophy, it's about curiosity. 3. Software development is not as straightforward as you make it seem. It's not just about best practices, management and finding an optimal way to combine existing libraries into your project. Sometimes you run into unforeseen issues, strange niches that your libraries may not account for. Sometimes you need to dive into the specifics of these libraries, understand at a lower level why they do not function for your use case. You might need to "hack" these libraries. Fork and customise them to truly fit in your project and produce the desired results. And the only thing that will help you then is deep knowledge and the ability to work with low level software.

tester756 3y ago
>I don't understand why you believe low-level "intrusive" programming and general software engineering are mutually exclusive. Hmm, while I don't fully agree with his comment, then your comment reminded me how I hate to discuss programming languages and programming ecosystems with C people. It feels like C/low lvl people often refer to some "standard" that they treat as a bible of programming languages even when nobody mentions C and they treat GCC/CLANG as a perfect reference for compilers. So, while high level devs dont understand low lvl stuff, then I believe low lvl programmers aren't creative at very abstract level, very abstract system modeling cuz they're too used to modeling everything with integers in C. And they're too used to being hurt by C ecosystem that they believe it is "normal". High level people (web developers) spend a lot of time arguing about their buzzwords like microservices, ddd, oop vs fp, etc.
- cryogenicfire 3y ago
  Honestly, that is fair. My perspective on this is as a high-level developer, looking into how the things I am using daily actually work. I haven't actually interacted with any proper low-level developer, kind of hard to come across them where I am tbh, so I don't have any clue about how snobbish they can be, but I have seen a fair share of high level devs do it too, as you mentioned. I kind of get it? It's like a way to get validation on the technology you are stuck with for the rest of your working lives, I'm guilty of pushing Flutter onto people despite having had a painful experience with it (state management is a nightmare). But hey ultimately I just think people should satisfy their curiosities. My work is often always in Python, JS or Java, but at some point I got tired of just doing regular software development stuff and lately I've happened to gain interest in low level development. (Like any definitely sane person I chose to start with rust and decided my first ever rust project should be an emulator, so maybe I'm just dead inside and I don't know it yet)

tester756 3y ago

>I don't understand why you believe low-level "intrusive" programming and general software engineering are mutually exclusive. Hmm, while I don't fully agree with his comment, then your comment reminded me how I hate to discuss programming languages and programming ecosystems with C people. It feels like C/low lvl people often refer to some "standard" that they treat as a bible of programming languages even when nobody mentions C and they treat GCC/CLANG as a perfect reference for compilers. So, while high level devs dont understand low lvl stuff, then I believe low lvl programmers aren't creative at very abstract level, very abstract system modeling cuz they're too used to modeling everything with integers in C. And they're too used to being hurt by C ecosystem that they believe it is "normal". High level people (web developers) spend a lot of time arguing about their buzzwords like microservices, ddd, oop vs fp, etc.

cryogenicfire 3y ago
Honestly, that is fair. My perspective on this is as a high-level developer, looking into how the things I am using daily actually work. I haven't actually interacted with any proper low-level developer, kind of hard to come across them where I am tbh, so I don't have any clue about how snobbish they can be, but I have seen a fair share of high level devs do it too, as you mentioned. I kind of get it? It's like a way to get validation on the technology you are stuck with for the rest of your working lives, I'm guilty of pushing Flutter onto people despite having had a painful experience with it (state management is a nightmare). But hey ultimately I just think people should satisfy their curiosities. My work is often always in Python, JS or Java, but at some point I got tired of just doing regular software development stuff and lately I've happened to gain interest in low level development. (Like any definitely sane person I chose to start with rust and decided my first ever rust project should be an emulator, so maybe I'm just dead inside and I don't know it yet)