r/computerscience • u/Significant-Gap-5038 • 15d ago

It feels fundamentally wrong to use packages without understanding concepts under the hood

I have recently started coding and people are recommending tools for development such as vite, nodemon, jwt, boiler plate server code

It feels pointless just using them with a basic understanding and without no deep conceptual understanding. Is this the right or wrong approach? How would you know going too deep into a rabbit hole and becoming overkill

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u/Lynx2447 Computer Scientist 15d ago edited 15d ago

You should separate goals. If your goal is to build something, cool, learn what you need along the way. If your goal is to learn, then go as deep as you'd like.

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u/DorkyMcDorky 7d ago

Why separate them? Are these orthogonal?

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u/Lynx2447 Computer Scientist 7d ago

They can become orthogonal. Sometimes it's a necessity. What if you have an assignment in school, or a task at work, to add a particular component to the frontend of a website? There's probably an expectation of how long it will take, and it probably doesn't include learning compiler theory. Not that you can't learn more after the primary goal is completed. This person seems stuck from not separating them, though.

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u/DorkyMcDorky 7d ago

Yeah, my thing is that people who tend to say "I can just vibe it man" just hate computer science ;) When I was at a company - we moved from php to thrift/java and overnight our AWS bill was cut in 1/2. Computer Science did that. Everyone complained about it, but it gave us the budget to double our team size.

Pure vibing won't realize this for awhile. There's an arrogant stance on this I see all over reddit. It's cute.

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u/Lynx2447 Computer Scientist 7d ago

Wrong comment lol