At some point in the past, Rob Pike mentioned that when we was working on Voyager (that spaceship that almost 40 years after launch, has left the solar system and continues to send back valuable science data), he had a relatively good understanding of the system from the quantum level (transistors are based on quantum theory) to the solar system. He wasn't kidding, either.

Very interesting fact. But the average programmer is not Rob Pike. How do you see this panning out for the average programmer? Will people need to learn a bit about chips to build more efficient CRUD apps?

i'm an average programmer but reading "High Performance Computing" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565923126.do made a huge difference for me even when writing more efficient CRUD apps. A big issue is understanding the cost of the operations in the stack you are using and the overheads caused by your stack.

I think there will always be an API. In the case of Deep Learning you already see Caffe, TensorFlow, etc. readily available for developers.

I don't think the average developer will need to understand chip design but I do think _many_ developers will need to know how to use deep learning frameworks.

It had definitely started as an API side detail. But it might become an industry thing. It allows very easy vendor lock-in for all the *AAS products (PAAS, SAAS, etc). You could be required an add-on for your server or machine to be able to use their product.

Oh, and imagine a Facebook chip. :)

I dunno... I'm not Rob Pike, but I could basically describe computing from the quantum level to the solar system dynamics and electromagnetic influences of a robotic interplanetary craft.

Then again, I've been coding for ~25 years, am an avid amateur astronomer, and have a degree in physics, so maybe the moral here is that some things just just take more time to master, beyond those first 6 weeks in a coding camp learning how to put together your first jQuery.

:-)