Tom ForsythIt is spooky how much @rygorous and I agree on so many many things. So in lieu of me making a video of my ramblings, watch his instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBhT7nbWpMg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBhT7nbWpMg
YouTube
Fabian talked some about how languages are fundamentally tools, and they're all flawed, and no one language will solve all problems. And I absolutely agree. Some people spend a lot of time creating new languages, and I'm just not sure it's productive.
I can't find it in the video, but there was a question about how far down the stack you need to know. I mean Fabian and I like to know all the way down to the metal. But that's because we're strange. Most people do not - it's absolutely not necessary to get stuff done.
But these two things are related - language choice, and how far down you need to know. Because I do think that whatever language you use, you should know the "next level down". When you're writing code, you should be able to fairly simply translate in your head to the language below it.
So if you're writing Python, you do need to understand what will become a dictionary, and roughly how duck-typing works.
If you're writing a JITted language, you should roughly understand how the JITter works.
If you're writing C# or other managed language, be aware of how the GC works, and you should be able to write the equivalent C++ code without too much trouble.
Writing C++ code? You should be able to mentally translate this into C. Where are the creator/destructors happening, and what do they turn into? Is that function call virtual? How does that work in practice, and what are the perf implications?
If you're writing C, you really should be able to read assembly, and know what instructions are available, how flow control turns into branches, what a cache line is, what happens when you run out of registers.
synlogic4242@TomF I started in 6502 assembly and only later learned C. makes one appreciate it more too.
@synlogic4242 I only recently learned the details of how the 68000 microcode works, and it's fascinating because inside a 68000 is effectively a 16-bit 6502, and the 68k register file is its page 0. So the "levels" concept works there as well!
@TomF nice!