[IshKebab]

> All I'm saying is someone has to write "jpeg.open()" in the first place.

Of course but my point is that where do you stop? Someone had to design a multiplier. Someone had do invent a diode.

The point at which you say "I don't really care about the level of abstraction below this" is more or less arbitrary. Knowing more is better of course, but there isn't really any level that you have to know.

[rbongers]

I would just expect MIT, of all places, to go quite low. I suppose everything has to come to an end, and MIT can't have the most intensive course forever. I just can't help but feel it's representative of what's happening everywhere.

[IshKebab]

Yeah you have a point. I would hope they have a more introductory module available first but I feel like SICP should be an advanced module for people specifically doing compsci. (I have no idea how American unis work; maybe it's already like that.)

I definitely remember when I did an engineering degree at Cambridge they had us doing assembly and typing decimal opcodes into a numberpad on an ancient microcontroller dev kit. I understood it but it sure was tedious and off-putting. And I say that as a typical HNer who has programmed forever and I even ended up doing CPU verification professionally. I imagine everyone else absolutely hated it.