Post #2716198
2026-04-24 19:24 UTC
And if you're writing assembly, you should absolutely know the principles of branch prediction, micro-ops, how atomic instructions work, and M(O)ESI(F).
But there's no need for a Python coder to know the whole stack. Even if they do (like I happen to) - if they try to think about them all at once, their head will explode!
Replies (2)
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@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-24 19:25
So a top-notch coder should always be *thinking* one level below what you're writing. If you can't easily tell what's happening in that lower level, then your code is probably too complex and/or meta, and you're creating "write only code" - a debugging or performance headache for your future self.
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@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-24 19:29
Side note - this also applies to shader languages. You need to know how code is translated to predicated SIMD, and roughly how flow control and atomic operations work on the hardware. It is hugely helpful to e.g. look at AMD's GCN/RDNA assembly and see how your code turned into real instructions.