While the original article didn't particularly garner my sympathy, I get concerned when people start complaining that others don't know how systems "actually fu

While the original article didn't particularly garner my sympathy, I get concerned when people start complaining that others don't know how systems "actually function". Image that, the next time you sat down to write come code, you're asked for the value of Planck's constant and to solve a couple of Feynmann diagrams for holes in a semi-conductor before you can write a single line. After all, a programmer can't just live with the high level abstractions of machine code and Kirchhoff's rules - she should know how the systems she works on actually function! Everyone uses some abstraction when they think about writing code. High quality abstractions (e.g. machine code) should be encouraged and things which violate those abstraction (e.g. bombarding memory with radiation) should be avoided. Low quality abstractions (e.g. monads are burritos) should be avoided. Being charitable, the professor seems concerned that poor quality abstraction are dominating and students are being forced to drop to abstraction levels that aren't relevant to their studies.