When working with embedded systems this information is more usefull, but very few programmers actually do work in that industry compared to others, e.g. web
We have GB and GB of memory in our computers today, but all of the "I don't have to worry about memory constraints" have snowballed. The application we run today are nowhere near as efficient as they could be otherwise.
That's what every kid in school ever says about a subject they don't care about. They're usually proven wrong.
Just in the first few pages you'll find this gem:
This leakage is why a DRAM cell must be constantly refreshed. For
most DRAM chips these days this refresh must happen every 64ms. During
the refresh cycle no access to the memory is possible. For some workloads
this overhead might stall up to 50% of the memory accesses (see [highperfdram]).
Having a deep understanding of how things work helps you visualize everything going on and see potential problems before they happen. This kind of deep thinking is helpful in all kinds of activities.
After you read something once you don't strictly know it. However if you run into a related problem down the road, you have a good chance that you can remember enough of what you read once to put a Google query together and find the original article.
After thinking about it a little more, what they probably mean is that while most programmers will forget most of what they read here (because they don't use it day-to-day) it is reliable information that will help shape their intuition about how memory works. That is probably what they mean about every programmer and this article.
Every programmer ought to read and test their intuition about how memory works against the content in this article. If they are surprised by something they read, they have the chance to adjust their intuition so that it is closer to the truth.
When you put fuel in your car and you turn the ignition and step on the gas, the wheels move. So all you need to know is where the fuel goes and how to turn the ignition and where the gas pedal is. But one day, I guarantee you, the wheels will stop moving.
When your boss storms up to your desk and says "Why aren't the god damn wheels moving?! We're losing ad revenue every minute!!", I hope Code Review Guy is around to tell you how fuel injectors work.
There's knowing how fuel injectors work, and there's knowing how copper crystal in the wire admits an energy band for free electrons.