This 100%. The vast majority of programmers' lives is spent reading code. We need to be able to interpret, repair and extend the work of others. I often hear

This 100%. The vast majority of programmers' lives is spent reading code. We need to be able to interpret, repair and extend the work of others. I often hear this defense of C++, that you only need to know certain parts and the rest are for "library writers". This is an absurd argument, but not exactly surprising from the core C++ cult(and I say this with 26 years as a C/C++ dev). It's almost as if there are two separate camps, one writing and maintaining production software, and another group which only works on language internals and is becoming further divorced from reality.