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Comment by fail2fail2ban | Hacker News Reader

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fail2fail2ban·

> But ask yourself: how does your browser layout engine and scripting engine work?

[But ask yourself: how does your car's engine work?]

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My point is: he can focus on HTML, CSS and JavaScript all he wants, and remain abstracted from internals. That's fine.

But here we are talking about one of the companies responsible for implementing such technologies, where the science he implies as not being very relevant IS relevant.

It's the difference between applying to a truck driver work, to a truck engine designer work. For the latter, knowing the theory of an internal combustion engine IS relevant.

> My point is: he can focus on HTML, CSS and JavaScript all he wants, and remain abstracted from internals. That's fine.

The majority of engineering positions that Google hires for are exactly this. The Chrome / Chromium team is just one team at Google. Most of the engineers who work there are building/scaling iOS apps, web apps, and are doing the exact same work that I do all day long.

A better analogy would be hiring engine designers by spending 90% of the interview asking them questions about low level metallurgy, and 10% about engine design as such. I would reverse those ratios.

A lot more people do stuff that interacts with the details of the browser engine than they do that interacts with the car engine; much more common (and easier) to find bugs in the browser engine than in your car engine.

Now if I was just browsing the internet, then, sure, your analogy might be more apt. But that's not what we're doing.

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