> The way a computer works is based off of transistors and some concepts built on top of that (ALUs for example). However, there is no need to know about any of that because you're presented with an abstraction (assembly).
I'd argue you should know how that works.
Cache-misses, pipelining and all these subtle performance intricacies that seem to have no rhyme or reason just fall out out understanding exactly how you get shorter clock cycles, different types of memory and the tradeoffs that they present.
One of the best things I ever did was go build a couple projects on an FPGA, when you get down to that level all of these leaky (performance) abstractions are clear as day.
I'd argue you should know how that works.
Cache-misses, pipelining and all these subtle performance intricacies that seem to have no rhyme or reason just fall out out understanding exactly how you get shorter clock cycles, different types of memory and the tradeoffs that they present.
One of the best things I ever did was go build a couple projects on an FPGA, when you get down to that level all of these leaky (performance) abstractions are clear as day.