It’s like driving a car. Most people can drive without needing to understand the internals, and it’ll still get them from point A to B. But just like some people enjoy diving deep into car mechanics, others enjoy understanding the intricacies of software.
For me, that deeper knowledge is an advantage. It helps me quickly evaluate tradeoffs between databases, debug at the OS level, or dismiss a library still relying on select if I expect heavy load. This insight saves time and increases efficiency.
Yes, and if you are a powertrain engineer (allegory for system developer) you'd benefit from knowing a variety of technologies in the automotive industry to be able to adapt to market conditions. If you are a heavy equipment mechanic (allegory for operator), knowing Cummins, Cat, and Detroit engines would be expected. For some reason computing professionals tend to be a lot more tribal and gravitate toward monoculture.
I politely disagree. I love the driving a car analogy.
You've got 2 kinds of cars overall really. Automatic transmission or manual. Get into any of them and everything is the same. Gas pedal, brake pedal, etc.
Objective what you need to get done? Drive from A to B.
It is impossible to drive from A to B with FreeBSD if all you know is Linux commands/syntaxes. That's my whole argument. That it isn't as mild of a jump as driving car A or car B. You are blocked (and need to throw out what you know on Linux for BSD because it'll collide).
Are the differences mild? Sure, but enough to make you ineffective.
And in the car analogy, it's other a diesel engine vs gasoline. The fundamentals are the same but there are some core differences, and it's just nice to know more stuff about everything.
For me, that deeper knowledge is an advantage. It helps me quickly evaluate tradeoffs between databases, debug at the OS level, or dismiss a library still relying on select if I expect heavy load. This insight saves time and increases efficiency.