Comment by sho_hn

> Only a minority of programmers would understand how to write an operating system. Only a tiny number of people would know how a modern CPU logically works, and fewer still could explain the electrical physics.

I'd say this is true for programmers at, say, 20, but they spend the next four decades slowly improving their understanding and mastery of all the things you name, at least the good ones.

The real question is whether that growth trajectory will change for the worse or the better.

To be clear, this is not an AI doomerist comment, because none of us have spent enough time with the tech yet. I've gone down multiple lanes of thought on this, and I have cause for both worry and optimism. I'm curious to see how the lives of engineers in an AI world will look like, ultimately.