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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

I'm not so sure about the arguments here. Theoretical knowledge is more advantageous if things are soundly designed. If stuff is a cobbled together mess, as many modern tools are, it may actually block flow or lead to false assumptions.

Don't get me wrong, it's a valid pursuit, but I'm not convinced by the arguments presented.

Instead you can say it opens the door to more serious work such as say language design, operating system teams, things like that. It rarefies your skillset especially if you don't suck at it. You aren't likely to get an important position at say, nvidia, by going through bootcamps. The crack of that door is open much wider for those with a Stanford PhD in hand. I'm sure there's exceptions, but I'd imagine they're quite rare.

I think it's unlikely, however, to make you necessarily more proficient in the latest churn of frameworks to implement the latest churn of websites.

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A bonus is theoretical knowledge is quite stable: there is usually some thought put into how to pace and structure the teaching of it (e.g. pedagogy). It builds on itself. And it doesn't expire at the same rate that frameworks do. Drinking from a deeper pool of knowledge (as it were) is a profoundly different experience than learning new tools.

If you're early in your career, focusing on marketable skills and getting experience is a smart move. Once you start thinking about progressing to intermediate and beyond, theory starts to be a secret weapon of sorts that lets you tackle bigger and harder problems.

The article agrees with you that, for learning tools, "on-demand" or "just-in-time" learning is advantageous. This applies for the things that you point out as being commonly cobbled together. However, for learning whole concepts like "AI" or "cloud development," these things are rarely cobbled together and require one to learn how to think through a whole new lens. The concept is larger than any one tool, and the idea is that thinking more broadly will be advantageous in the long run

And that's what I'm fundamentally disputing. We're in an age where "trade school" programming is needed - someone has to do the work and there's no shame in a job well done.

A plumber doesn't need to master the mathematics of fluid dynamics or have an advanced degree in chemical engineering to do their job well. A hair stylist doesn't need to pursue a dermatology medical degree focused on hair growth.

Plumbers and cosmetologists have plenty of work and it's a good profession. They need to go to school, pass exams, get a certification, it's a real thing.

Similarly, getting an e-commerce site up or building a mobile app doesn't require an ability to say, demonstrate the correspondence principle of procedural abstraction in lambda calculus. There's jobs that do but that ain't one of them.

I think you’re agreeing with the article?

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