"So, I'm glad it's all peek&poke these days. It means we're builing shoulders on which later generations stand. The opposite situation would be _sad_, say if everyone had to learn quantum mechanics just to add numbers together ... or if everyone had to know how to surface mount with a hot plate in order to post to Facebook ... well, OK, that might be a good thing, actually ... but you get my point."
One can learn to program in, say, Python without understanding a given machine instruction set. One can even learn a subset, and have a correct understanding of some of its syntax and semantics and little or no understanding of other parts. That doesn't mean that learning the rest is pointless, or that learning a machine language couldn't give a Python programmer deeper and useful insight into why some constructs are slow and others are fast. Or that learning about digital circuit design couldn't give insight into what makes a machine instruction set energy efficient. Or that learning quantum mechanics couldn't give some insight into what makes circuits work the way they do. All these tools can be useful and the connections between them are some of the most interesting and useful things to know. This trend toward "industry relevant" knowledge is just to say the graph should be chopped up into consumable sound bites without regard to their coherence or utility for learning other things. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
