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Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

The emphasis on getting things done vs. understanding is another manifestation of our age's extreme time poverty. People don't have time to understand anything.

Add to that the fact that computing is so trendy. Take the time to learn something -- web development, mobile development, the latest trendy language -- and it won't be hip anymore in 5-10 years.

As an experienced programmer I only take the time to deeply understand things that my intuition tells me will be around for a while and for which understanding is a major benefit to me. My intuition is guided by a mix of market share, speed of change in the target market, and robustness of the thing in question.

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It's another manifestation of the classic "it's expensive to be poor" situation. My personal struggle is with making the call re: understanding vs. getting things done compared with the return on investment. Understanding things is fun, though, and our systems are built upon enough analogy that understanding usually transfers (if only in part) to something else down the road.

Realistically it depends on how invested I am in the system. If it's something that I'm using all-the-time, it absolutely makes sense for me to have a deeper understanding because that understanding could save me time and give me a better perspective on why certain aspects of the system are the way they are. If it's something I use only as an auxiliary system, I don't invest as much time in understanding the system, only what the system can do for me.

A prime example of understanding how to use the system, but not the system itself is e-commerce. There are 17+ year old kids making 100K+ a month with e-commerce, having no programming skills or a deep understanding of the web or computers. They are experts at the tools they use, but honestly are not "computer" people. We've abstracted e-commerce to the point that it's not even necessary to deeply understand the web, with tools that exist now (Shopify etc.)

> things that my intuition tells me will be around for a while and for which understanding is a major benefit to me. My intuition is guided by a mix of market share, speed of change in the target market, and robustness of the thing in question.

Don't forget about the Lindy effect! A thing that has been around a long time is likely to stay around, whereas something new is much more likely to fade sooner too.

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