I always wonder what will happen with the next generations of programmers coming out of school - most of them get started with Python, Ruby or Java. And low level systems programming is mostly an after thought or an annoying class for most students.
How will the industry deal with people who can't hack/program at a low level?
See the recent 8088 mph [1] or more generally, the pouet website [2]
[1] http://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all... [2] http://www.pouet.net/
http://2015.revision-party.net/
:)
Check out some of the old school demos. They are still squeezing more out of that old 6502 and various custom chips.
This is still the case. I am familiar with assembly and X86 but I never work with it. I do not need to, there are people that work on that. That does not impair me, it is just that the world of tech has grown much larger and there is a lot to know where nobody can know it all. Some have the feeling that if you cannot work with assembly or write compilers or device drivers you somehow don't have your chops.
The skills that are "few and far between" are those wanting to work on a unique system where that knowledge is not directly applicable to today's less bespoke technologies.
Not understanding it, however, would perhaps have impaired you in the long run.
Low level programming is easier than many suggest, but at the same time more essential than many would admit. It's not that you have to practice it, but understanding it is important.
E.g. I can't help but be alerted of career programmers who have no grasp of basic things like memory pointers. This surprisingly often goes together with not understanding high level concepts like asymptotic complexity, explained away with the same argument that "you don't need it in real life, just call sort()". It's like a plumber who seems to follow the build code doing all pipework inclinations by the book, but fails to recognize the general principle that water flows downwards. It's painting by numbers at best, and religious practice at worst.
There is no room for magic if one is serious about their trade.
Assembly programming is still being taught as a EE/CS curriculum, so the younger folks know (some) assembly as well.
That said, not all programming jobs require a low level programming knowledge. Now why would a Java or Rails programmer have to know ARM assembly, for example?
We can leave those things to the experts :D