"This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it."

I am usually of the school that finds more value in deeply understanding a single thing than having good knowledge of a lot of things.

When it comes to start-ups and hackers, do you think it's more important to have a deep knowledge of a few topics or a fair understanding of a lot of topics? I think it's more beneficial to have the kind of knowledge that the article described, than a true bare bones understanding of programming.

You don't need to know compiler languages to code the next big thing. It just gives people an indication to how smart the founders are, which means a lot.