Not OP but similar type of brain here. Certain types of abstractions make me uncomfortable, the worst being "trust me bro" type web framework abstractions where there isn't a direct link between A and B, just a contract definition that says "A and B will integrate... somehow".
When an API says it takes something, I need to know the exact form of that "thing". Saying "you can give it this object" doesn't suit me because where are the edge cases, where are the interactions, how can I know for sure I'm giving it what it needs. The docs never tell you where to find the object def, then you spend 3 hours diving into the source code to understand it's just a two item struct or something.
LLMs introduced an explosion of complexity, suddenly code bases sprout out of nowhere, and there's no point in following all the different datapaths through because the guy who loves testing out the latest claude will just change everything in a few days anyway.
With low level programming, nearly everything is just raw data, aligned to meaning. I like to tell juniors confused about file types, that file types are a social construct, they're just a bag of bytes with some structure. Same thing applies with low level programming. You know what a byte is, you know the endianness, the signedness, you can feel comfort in knowing you're not missing anything, and then you build up from there seeing each block build upon the previous.
> I like to tell juniors confused about file types, that file types are a social construct, they're just a bag of bytes with some structure.
I always get confused about what the hiring landscape looks like. How is it that people are grinding leetcode or whatever just to get into places, but still have those kinds of gaps in fundamental understanding?
Because even prior to LLMs, “knows how to program” and “understands computers” could be disjoint. I worked with someone who didn’t understand how to find what was consuming their disk space, nor how to fix it, or most egregiously, that they needed to empty the Trash (MacOS) to actually reclaim the disk space.
[−]SarikayaKomzin · 2026-10-11 Sun 01:42 UTC ·
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> No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbor, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished.
- E.M. Forster, _The Machine Stops_
Abstraction is terrific and terrifying. It is the shoulders of giants we build upon, but when it begins to scale nonlinearly I fear it endangers us as much as enraptures us.
When an API says it takes something, I need to know the exact form of that "thing". Saying "you can give it this object" doesn't suit me because where are the edge cases, where are the interactions, how can I know for sure I'm giving it what it needs. The docs never tell you where to find the object def, then you spend 3 hours diving into the source code to understand it's just a two item struct or something.
LLMs introduced an explosion of complexity, suddenly code bases sprout out of nowhere, and there's no point in following all the different datapaths through because the guy who loves testing out the latest claude will just change everything in a few days anyway.
With low level programming, nearly everything is just raw data, aligned to meaning. I like to tell juniors confused about file types, that file types are a social construct, they're just a bag of bytes with some structure. Same thing applies with low level programming. You know what a byte is, you know the endianness, the signedness, you can feel comfort in knowing you're not missing anything, and then you build up from there seeing each block build upon the previous.
I always get confused about what the hiring landscape looks like. How is it that people are grinding leetcode or whatever just to get into places, but still have those kinds of gaps in fundamental understanding?
- E.M. Forster, _The Machine Stops_
Abstraction is terrific and terrifying. It is the shoulders of giants we build upon, but when it begins to scale nonlinearly I fear it endangers us as much as enraptures us.