When understanding a new "magic", there's this beautiful moment when you grok it, and the abstraction poofs away.
It's when you take apart a mechanical clock and keep looking for the time-keeping part, until you figure out that there isn't a time-keeping part in there, it's just gears and a spring.
It's when you learn about integrated circuits and full-adders, and keep trying to understand how a bunch of transistors can do Mathematics, until you figure out that there isn't a mathematics-doing part in there, it's just circuits and wires, arranged in a way that makes the voltages come out right.
It's when your understanding of the top-down structure snaps together with the bottom-up mechanics of the building blocks. There's no space left for the ghost in the machine to haunt, and you go "Oh. huh".
I live for that moment.
It's when you take apart a mechanical clock and keep looking for the time-keeping part, until you figure out that there isn't a time-keeping part in there, it's just gears and a spring.
It's when you learn about integrated circuits and full-adders, and keep trying to understand how a bunch of transistors can do Mathematics, until you figure out that there isn't a mathematics-doing part in there, it's just circuits and wires, arranged in a way that makes the voltages come out right.
It's when your understanding of the top-down structure snaps together with the bottom-up mechanics of the building blocks. There's no space left for the ghost in the machine to haunt, and you go "Oh. huh". I live for that moment.