No, how can you not know the difference between RAM and disk in a server context? What sort of programmers are these?

I know the different between RAM and disk in a server context (what sort of programmer wouldn't?!), but I've worked pretty exclusively in no-persisted-storage environments (mostly Heroku) for ~5 years now, where referring to "saving" files/data outside of a DB context almost exclusively means "save to memory" and I routinely run into problems whenever my stack requires downloading any sort of third-party library that would have to persist outside of RAM (e.g. downloading NLP libs).

When you abstract "storage" into "my library/tools save state somewhere" (and god forbid you include localStorage into the mix!) and don't deal with the hardware itself, I could see how a lot of new-ish coders wouldn't be able to differentiate RAM and disk.

Thanks for the great explanation! I haven't messed with Heroku myself. Might be a sign I'm getting old...

I thought that was crazy, but reflecting over my CS education they haven’t gone over the difference between disk space and RAM. I suppose they figure everyone already knows?

I think that's why Scott Hanselman started this series https://www.hanselman.com/blog/new-youtube-series-computer-t...

You sure you didn't have a computer architecture course? Most CS programs it is a required course

I did (actually it was last semester) but they didn’t do basic definitions, it came with an assumption you knew what the parts of a computer were.

That's unfortunate. Luckily there are tons of good resources online like OSSU https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

What is a required course?

In American terminology, individual classes are called "courses". This particular course is likely "required" as one of the steps in a Computer Science "major".

a required module of a course

It could be meant not in a way of "this is ram vs this is disk", but "we have a 1tb dataset, what kind of a server do we need?", and the person not knowing enough about databases to think they need 1tb of ram to be able to run it.

But can you really be, let's be modest, around the baseline of developer competence not knowing the difference between RAM and disk space?

Hard to believe to me.

>A lot of developers only know the new, needlessly complicated ways of doing things.

Yeah that was inevitable in an industry that moves quickly, likes new stuff, and prefers fast, superficial learning when that's all you need to get your product out of the door. Google and StackOverflow are probably controlling a decent chunk of decision making these days such that you don't need to think about solutions too much.