Thursday, April 28, 2011

Skilldrick » Magic in software development

Skilldrick » Magic in software development: "What we need to get to, eventually, is an understanding of the whole stack, but at greater and greater granularities as we get further away from our main level. So, if you’re a Ruby on Rails programmer, you need to know most of Ruby (but not all of it). It’s helpful to know a bit of C, and a bit of how the operating system responds to certain commands. Below that level, it’s good to have a vague understanding of how a computer works. And it’s useful to know that electrical signals can only transmit at a finite speed, and that there’s a physical limit to the number of transistors in a processor. As time goes on you can begin to flesh out these lower levels, remembring that the higher levels are generally going to be more beneficial to your day-to-day work."