@TomF I think that was generally true 25 years ago and I think it’s still true in some cases now, but for most programmers working on most software it just isn’t necessary anymore, and often isn’t even possible to do well.

Cheap computers and reasonable abstractions have made it largely unnecessary while complex architectures, sophisticated compilers and large libraries/frameworks have made it largely infeasible for most.

@TomF I read the rest of the thread before I replied. My reference to framework complexity was meant to address that my comment wasn’t just about assembly.

Modern systems, at every level from “what the compiler does” to “what the hardware does” are often too complex to justify the cost of understanding the next level down more than superficially, and sufficiently robust to not require that for most uses.

@MartyFouts To clarify - I don't mean you should *actually* know what the compiler is going to do. That is hard, and most compilers don't actually go through those intermediate stages.

I mean that when you're writing a piece of code in a language, you should be able to *in theory* write the same code using the next simpler language. Now, you're choosing not to do that for efficiency - but you COULD. And knowing what that version would look like will inform how you write the real code.