When I did web dev it was more important to know how the WEB BROWSER works, not how machine code works
it's not useful to know how the browser allocates memory or garbage collects it, it's more useful to know that it has web sockets. Don't get the idea that things you know are relevant to other people.
You go as deep as you need to. My day job involves writing tons of Javascript and there is zero need for me to dive into the underlying processes until something goes wrong. So far the lowest I’ve ever needed to go was the node source.
What do you consider "high-level code" and in what way does deeply understanding how a computer works influence your approach?
In college, I optimized the array removal routine from O(N^2) to O(N) by using INVARIANTS
But it probably ran in like 100us anyway
Ugh, invariants...
Anyway, complexity stays relevant, no matter what language you use. That's the real deal.
It only stays relevant if the JavaScript is too slow. In the case of removing two elements from an array of length 8, it's not too slow to remove them one by one since, again, it runs in microseconds
Certainly one can bang out code their entire career without ever having a clue how machine code works, but I really wouldn't advise it. At worst it leads to total ignorance, and at best you accumulate a disconnected set of "best practices" as inscrutable lore handed down from on high.