Comment by brainless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brainless | Hacker News Reader

Are you thinking or debating if getting a deeper understanding of CS will help you or your career?

I am thinking of the same. Even though I have a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science, it has been 14 years that I actually used any of it. I regret it sometimes since I know what it is to know how things work underneath the high level languages (PHP, JavaScript and Python for me).

Lately I have started taking more interest in CS and I think part of the reason is Rust. You could be learning Go, Swift or any similar language and come to similar feelings.

In Python (my language of choice for the last 7 years along with JavaScript) I do not really have to care about pointers, stack or heap allocation, how memory gets create or cleaned, etc. I also do not need to know if there is a virtual machine, a garbage collector, etc. Data types and how they are handled are somewhat important but I rarely get slapped by the Python interpreter for mistakes.

To me it seems that a lot of developers are choosing to go into more typed and lower level (closer to metal) languages. My gut feeling says this is happening because we can not crank up core speed from 2GHz to 3Ghz to 4Ghz and beyond as easily as we did pre-2Ghz era. Yes we hit ceilings of per-core power. But we have more users than ever before and the world seems to be eager to bring computing to even larger audiences.

All this is great, but it means developers need more refined and powerful set of tools that can work in low-power environments, boot up fast and deliver more computing throughput. The high levels of abstractions that most of us have enjoyed will stay but there will be new territories where you want to push code that is way, way more efficient. If we want to work with them, we need to know not only how to push a Template into an `<H1 />` but about the metal that is underneath. From how browsers work internally to how networks work, how processes work or communicate, how memory is allocated and so forth.

So this is a choice we have to make individually. I choose to learn and I am going with Rust and spending time to learn CS again. It is a slow process though, I have full time commitment to my product as a solo founder. Cheers!

I want to add something to this, something that I am understanding now perhaps because I have slowed down as a person. Learning is HARD, really really hard. More so when there are tons of social, professional and personal distractions.

On top of this I am chased by procrastination. I have gotten a much better grip at this. But just as an example - I have tried learning Rust at least 4 times before since Rust got highlight on HN I guess. I failed each each one. This time, I have at least gotten to the point where I opened the documentation on Vectors! My goodness, who am I? Complete lack of patience.

This directly causes me to sense pressure when I see statements like "type 1/2" engineer. It is not the material that is attacking me. It is my own failure hiding under the shelter of ego.

I think this is an extremely common experience. At least it maps really well to what I've gone through. Small surges of "motivation" wherein I embark on projects and then they taper off, constant battles with procrastination, etc.

However, at least in my experience, it's possible to develop tools and systems to stay disciplined enough to finish what I committed to. Not every tool works for every type of project so it's a constant battle. The good news, though, is that you can fail at this as many times as you'd like (I certainly have) but you only have to succeed once!

>> I know what it is to know how things work underneath the high level languages (PHP, JavaScript and Python for me)

I suspect this has helped you more than you seem to know. This knowledge opens doors; gets you jobs you couldn't otherwise get; and makes you a better programmer.

>> In Python (my language of choice for the last 7 years along with JavaScript) I do not really have to care about pointers, stack or heap allocation, how memory gets create or cleaned, etc. I also do not need to know if there is a virtual machine, a garbage collector, etc.

I have seen some horrendous Python code written by people who didn't understand these things. The Python VM "hides" them from you, but they're still relevant for writing fast, correct code as almost every operation in the language ends up using one or more of those "under the hood".

Best of luck with Rust and your startup!

You are perhaps true about me not being aware that the core CS knowledge is helping me all the time. I have always been able to explain technical issues on a whiteboard all the way to the level of protocol or internals. And they have helped me immensely in my work.

I guess since I do not spend a lot of time in CS literature, I have the feeling I do not know much. But I guess I already have an edge at work without noticing it.

Thanks and best of luck to you!

A lot of people link CS with a career as software engineer for the web but leave out a lot of other software engineering and research opportunities. I get that a deep knowledge of CS doesn't always directly help while doing web development but it can really help in other area's of software development (embedded systems, OS, graphics, etc.)

Of course everyone should learn because otherwise they will be left behind with pay or life in general. Just setting it up in a negative way should not be there like "type 1 vs type 2". There is much more to be achieved when you are nice to people and learn to cooperate in a helpful way than when you are master of algorithms and low level operating system details.

I think it is not intentionally set up as negative. I think it is our perception since learning is hard. I have failed a lot in the last many years to learn (relearn) deeper concepts even though I wanted to.

So when I see "type 1/2" I automatically feel pressured. But that is my own incapability to stick to the subject, the books. My own procrastination. Learning is hard, escaping with an excuse about ego is way easier. Rust is already teaching me this.

Rust also seems like a great choice because of its close ties with WebAssembly. Web developers who learn it should have an advantage as the tooling starts to get better around WASM.

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