Until maybe 15-ish years ago, it was common for programmers to “bottom out” on the machine code level. In other words, they came to roughly understand the whole software stack in principle down to the software-hardware interface (the CPU executing machine code). The topic of this thread is that this has (allegedly) changed, developers at large don’t go down in their understanding until they hit hardware anymore.
Okay, you might argue that in earlier decades programmers also tended to have an understanding of hardware circuit design and how a CPU and memory etc. works in terms of logical gates and clocks. But arguably there is a harder abstraction boundary between hardware and software than at any given software-software abstraction boundary.
Okay, you might argue that in earlier decades programmers also tended to have an understanding of hardware circuit design and how a CPU and memory etc. works in terms of logical gates and clocks. But arguably there is a harder abstraction boundary between hardware and software than at any given software-software abstraction boundary.