[brudgers]

When you cook a dish, you don't need to know the chemistry involved to make something tasty. The meal is the measure. You can read recipe books eight hours a day. It won't fill your belly.

Same for web apps. Build something to do something you want to do. Knowing enough to make something is enough to make something.

You will never know it all. Nobody even knows what "it all" is. Good luck.

[engneeer]

yeah, totally agree, starting with a practical approach is the best way.

only there comes the time when you need to improvise and deal with unfavorable circumstances, then it’s good to know the basics about mailliard reactions and emulsifiers. …reading a book about the chemical perspective of cooking was a great addition to my cooking skills.

if you are a practitioner you can enrich and deepen your skills with some theoretical foundations from time to time, at least that’s my experience so far.

[brudgers]

Your anecdata doesn’t unvaludate my analogy.

Anyway Maillard published their paper in 1912. Crusty bread and seared steaks however were already a thing for millennia. The theory is not the flavor.