That there are way more developers than there are developers who actually understand how software works. That software has become an inverted pyramid growing ever smaller at the lower layers close to the hardware, and ever larger at the top.
This leads to system instability, poor performance, and a general stifling of innovation. Computers have not substantially changed in 50 years. It’s just layers upon layers of code, some of which very few people even understand anymore.
This is true, especially with the invention of tools that just do it for you.
> Computers have not substantially changed in 50 years
Is that due to a lack of low-level engineering talent, or the limitations of our scientific knowledge that computers depend on?
yep.
before, you could not tinker with computers without knowing a little bit. Discrete eletronics were everywhere with TTL logic ports. basic dos/unix commands used stuff like regular expressions, redirection of stdout, etc.
today the kids grow with cell phones, so high-level they do not know what a directory is. they code websites, but do not know what is a socket.
lower level disciplines are thought as "boring", "distant from market", "not useful" "I ain't going to design chips anyway"
AI has made it worse. undergrads ride the hype-wave, programming in super-high-level abstractions, pyTorch, etc., doing their final projects with a 2 page code (and happy about how short it is) that they do not understand deeply.
Low level engineers are the oil in (energy) the system. Neglecting low level is akin to underestimating. Its mistake to take energy independence for granted. The thing stops without it
