I would argue that not understanding bootstrapping as a programmer is akin to not understanding how a hydroelectric dam works as an electrician. Light switches are something the average electrician deals with on normal basis. I don't think the same can be said for programmers and bootloaders.
I program for a living (perl), but I don't write to the bare metal. And I have no immediate need to understand bootstrapping. I know what the concept means, and can describe it in vague terms.
Could I build a bootloader, or diagnose where one went wrong? no.
Could a standard electrical engineer build or diagnose a hydroelectric dam? no
But honestly, I don't want to know. I would rather fill my head with more pertinent information to my job (designing a lexical parser for re2c given the constraints of x). And I'm sure my employer feels the same way.
But to drag my post back onto a more general topic that is more constructive to this conversation:
Every one of us is probably an expert at the slim niche of stuff we deal with every day. We don't have to understand the process behind the modern combustion engine, how characters appear on screen when we hit the letters on our keyboards, or a thousand other things that enable us to do our jobs and live our lives.
Most people are idiots about things outside of their areas of experience. I would quickly be out of a job if I was an idiot at programing perl. But I can very easily live my life while being an idiot about hunting, sub-orbital physics, biochemistry, and a hundred other things.
If someone has a job that deals with X, I expect them to not be an idiot at X. If your job is securely working with a mainframe, I expect to not be an idiot at security and mainframes. If your job is a technical writer on how to use an application that interfaces with a mainframe, I expect you to know how to properly start up the application. I do not expect you to know how to properly start up said mainframe.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
I program for a living (perl), but I don't write to the bare metal. And I have no immediate need to understand bootstrapping. I know what the concept means, and can describe it in vague terms.
Could I build a bootloader, or diagnose where one went wrong? no.
Could a standard electrical engineer build or diagnose a hydroelectric dam? no
But honestly, I don't want to know. I would rather fill my head with more pertinent information to my job (designing a lexical parser for re2c given the constraints of x). And I'm sure my employer feels the same way.
But to drag my post back onto a more general topic that is more constructive to this conversation:
Every one of us is probably an expert at the slim niche of stuff we deal with every day. We don't have to understand the process behind the modern combustion engine, how characters appear on screen when we hit the letters on our keyboards, or a thousand other things that enable us to do our jobs and live our lives.
Most people are idiots about things outside of their areas of experience. I would quickly be out of a job if I was an idiot at programing perl. But I can very easily live my life while being an idiot about hunting, sub-orbital physics, biochemistry, and a hundred other things.
If someone has a job that deals with X, I expect them to not be an idiot at X. If your job is securely working with a mainframe, I expect to not be an idiot at security and mainframes. If your job is a technical writer on how to use an application that interfaces with a mainframe, I expect you to know how to properly start up the application. I do not expect you to know how to properly start up said mainframe.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy