I absolutely agree. Many would scoff at the prospect of writing a barebones OS for educational purposes, claiming that they would never have to use that knowledge in the real world. While they will not be given such a task by an employer, realistically, the vast insight gained from the project about process scheduling, interrupts, memory protection, hardware interaction, etc. is incredibly valuable.
Programmers not at least familiar with low-level concepts are not grounded in reality. Their solutions to problems and code may be of worse quality than those of more well-rounded programmers.
I probably sound like quite a snob, but I'm the kind of guy who reads Understanding the Linux Kernel before bed and reverses parts of the stage 2 iPhone bootloader for fun, so put what I say into perspective.
Programmers not at least familiar with low-level concepts are not grounded in reality. Their solutions to problems and code may be of worse quality than those of more well-rounded programmers.
I probably sound like quite a snob, but I'm the kind of guy who reads Understanding the Linux Kernel before bed and reverses parts of the stage 2 iPhone bootloader for fun, so put what I say into perspective.