Use of learning computer system architecture?

Question

I have it in my course and i dont understand the practical use of learning it

That's pretty amazing that you plan on developing software that doesn't have to run on hardware! — Derek Van Cuyk, Sep 02 '15 at 17:11
@DerekVanCuyk hahah no i didnt meant like that i have nothing in my course about hardware or to study anything about hardware. It is all like a bunch of programming languages and computer system architecture etc — user5293488, Sep 02 '15 at 17:15
Sure it may seem silly now, especially if you're not into hardware but Mike's answer is spot on. Knowing hardware will make you more cognizant of what your programming and how to make it better — Derek Van Cuyk, Sep 02 '15 at 17:16
@DerekVanCuyk No, i dont consider hardware as silly. Mike's answer is the best it cleared all of my doubts. I am really sorry about the question i didnt knew that stackoverflow was not noob friendly. How can i delete the question? I tried but i cant find it. Note: i am using the mobile app. — user5293488, Sep 02 '15 at 17:21
Stack Overflow is a game of questions where you get more capabilities and features like delete your own comment as you go along and accrue more points. You're going to catch flak for novice questions, but guess what? Even the most talented people in Stack asked novice questions once too, they just don't like to admit that they did. So don't worry about asking noob questions, like EVER. My original score was negative because I asked "theory" questions that didn't seem stupid to me at the time either. It's hard to remember how tough the code was before it all of a sudden wasn't. — Mike Horstmann, Sep 02 '15 at 20:41
I don't think downvotes count when you're an min rep, so don't worry. The community is just telling you that this isn't the kind of question SO wants to see, not because it's noobish (i've seen some great noob questions before), but because it's not about programming or related topics, it's about your life and career choices, and about your will to learn something. This isn't a therapy session. — Leeor, Sep 04 '15 at 07:14

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 02 '15 at 16:57

This isn't the forum to be asking ultra-novice questions, or I apologize but overall "stupid" questions like that, but I'll give it a go to answer you. Hoping that understanding the "why" will fuel your compassion to learn what appears to be an unnecessary class and hopefully to one day prevent you from boning over your company's sysAdmin ultra hard.

Plain an simple "You need to know hardware to not program crap software" and I don't mean you need to know what GPU is recommended by Tom's Hardware, or that your machine has 8GB of ram and a sweet SSD.

You need to know endianess(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness) to program efficiently. You need to know core counts to run a self-managing, self-scaling nodejs clustered server, and what chip onboard codecs run best for a given configuration. You need to know that also to create a valid virtualbox machine or VMWare machine. You need to know the lowest possible denominator so that you know how your RAID Array is going to perform.

You need to know how many read/writes SSD's can manage before breaking down so you don't botch a company's entire data repository cause "You thought Samsung SSD's were good!"

You need to know about platter space so you can keep things running nicely, and trimming so your SSD on that old "Vista" machine they won't get rid of doesn't fill up with non trimmed data.

You need to go into Bob Joe Company, who's using WindowsXP and tell them where they can utilize their spend dollars the most efficient and safe way.

You need to know input/output, you need to understand the differences between VRAM and physical RAM, clock speeds, overclocking, latency, cycles, Hyper Threading, onboard/discrete hardware. You need to know why many things once existed to know why they are done the way they are today.

For example, when you have a horrendous update on your physical machine that blows everything up, you need to know that in a FUBAR situation you can jump CMOS and start over (that's a physical HARDWARE button that many lvl II's and III's often don't even have a clue about, guess where I learned it before ever being in IT? " Intro to computers - Hardware ")

"Unlearn" while you're in school and you'll find there's much you did not "learn" as you thought you did the first time around.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 02 '15 at 17:31

If you don't get pumped up over hardware.... software is not for you bro. If you're not frequenting Tom's and the ][-][, or even worse if you don't know what those mean you're probably wasting your time. I'm not saying you can't be a software programmer, but you should at least read the article below and reconsider why you chose "programming" as a major. (http://blog.codinghorror.com/please-dont-learn-to-code/)

That said I can tell you this.... I failed out of software in ITT-Tech but I never stopped attending, I changed majors to "Multimedia" which included some Adobe CS3, and also some JavaScript in web and finished in IT-Multimedia with honors and I STILL until a few years ago(about 3-4 years after graduating) only started to pick up some coding in my spare time. I found that I really enjoyed it, and you might to so I'm not discouraging you by any means. But read the above linked page and ask yourself if you're really meant to be happy as an IT worker in coding software. Maybe find something you're going to grasp to get your feet wet first, and take some low cost coding classes to get the idea of OOP like "CodeSchool.com"(40/mo but lots more content than) or "CodeCademy.com"(free, but not as structured or thorough as codeschool.com) You may find that you want to code, but it's going to take some time and practice to get readied up for true development.

I hope it helps man, I'd hate to see you make my job harder forcing yourself into a career you're not meant, or ready for. But I'd also genuinely like to see people be happier with more than a decent paycheck. :)

http://www.CodeSchool.com $40/mo

http://www.CodeCademy.com FREE - less content, slower to update

I really dont want to ask but if i dont i will not be able to sleep peacfully. What is tom's and the ][-][ ? And to reply i really love coding and i just started with basic programming and html so i am really new to all this architecture and all but i will(i have to) study it one day. I really enjoy spending time with computers and doing coding but i just started to learn it was my dream to major in it so it is not in any way a burden to me. I really appreciate your answer it really made me understand about the relationship. Also i will be happy if you could answer about what is tom and ...?? — user5293488, Sep 02 '15 at 17:40
HardOCP (http://www.HArdOCP.com) - You can start here for HardOCP, it's a bleeding edge tech blog, if you're lucky others will helpfully post some of their favorites. Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/system-configuration-recommendation-51.html) - Start here for Tom's and if you can't read the specs they're spouting off then go talk to your teacher with a printout of the page and ask in class how or why it might be relevant. (Warning: System building is as addictive as crack, because the only thing better than a built system is a bigger built system!) — Mike Horstmann, Sep 02 '15 at 18:01

Use of learning computer system architecture?

2 Answers2