“I’ve never understood programmers who loved the craft of programming, but were disinterested in the underlying hardware – the very tool that allows them to practice their craft.”
I don’t agree. Nothing implies that because something is important and necessary it should be interesting: I have no significant interest in agriculture just because food is necessary. The means by which our interests are born do not necessarily regard their importance, but certainly our vanity does.
I think “back in the day” (circa 1990 or earlier) programmers concerned themselves about hardware because there was not a lot of it (not much memory, disk space). Nowaways, there is an abundance, so your average programmer doesn’t care about that stuff any more because there isn’t a stringent hardware requirement to meet. In recent memory, I have never seem a spec that says: You program must only consume X amount of memory at a particular time.
I think my idea requires an extrapolation:
The farm machinery may be very important, but more important than that is the air breathed by the farmer, without which there would be no work. Nevertheless, the farmer has probably no significant interest in biology just because phytoplankton produces most of the air he breathes.
If this is unfair, what to say about the psychological implications of importance as a cause of interest? Our interests precede any calculation of importance. The importance of our interests is nothing but our vanity’s concern.
I don’t deny the idea that hardware knowledge is important for software writers, but to say they should /like/ it is a different matter.
Jeff, recently i have experience this theme with a twist. lemme know what you think