Short answer: I wrote something which is a bit like a web browser, displaying custom data that can be anything from text to video. The layout and style of the visuals needed to change based on some analysis of the data + some rules that were sent to the player by the backend. This thing is now deployed in thousands of locations around the world. IMHO, I'd have to be a programming uber-prodigy to accomplish what I did, with a lesser framework than WPF. WPF allowed me to focus strictly on the data and rule analysis. The designers came up with nice presentation templates, I put in place the appropriate data bindings and converters, and BAM - it just worked, unbelievably fast and smooth. I come from a long Un*x/Mac background, used to be 100% ABM, but what those guys did in WPF is, to me, the application programmer's holy grail.

People don't roll out their string concatenators either, not to mention frame pointer managers. Programming is about solving problems with a given set of tools. If modern tools encapsulate data structures and provide you with optimized hash tables, why should you know what a hash function is? Such knowledge may be a good *social* indicator, that the guy/gal you're talking to is well read and geeky enough, but does this really influence the quality of the code? Tools keep getting better, libraries are richer and more spoiling every year, but the basic skill of analyzing a problem and stating it in terms that match the tools at hand, has not changed.

(warning: mild flame) As a programmer, I feel uncomfortable reading such a holistic reply. I do *feel*, like you, that it is important to understand the fundamentals of the machine and the relationship between high level functions and low level actions. However, just stating this feeling does not constitute a reply. Many people feel that there was something special and "profound" in their particular upbringing. However, very often this is an illusion. My fortran teacher, back in the late 80's, told me that programming in an IDE was not the real deal and did not give you a true sense of what you were writing. However, he was actually talking about himself. Every generation feels that the subsequent one is shallow and lacking some profound understanding of the world. This is no more than a psychological phenomenon. To explain why an understanding of a digital computer, pointers, interrupts, signals etc. helps programming, you need to give concrete examples.