One can benefit from knowing fundamentals of an adjacent field, especially something as broadly applicable as machine learning.
- You might want to use some ML in the project you are assigned next month
- It can help collaborating with someone who tackles that aspect of a project
- Fundamental knowledge helps you understand the "AI" stuff being marketed to your manager
The "I don't need this adjacent field" mentality feels familiar from schools I went to: first I did system administration where my classmates didn't care about programming because they felt like they didn't understand it anyway and they would never need it (scripting, anyone?); then I switched to a software development school where, guess what, the kids couldn't care about networking and they'd never need it anyway. I don't understand it, to me it's both interesting, but more practically: fast-forward five years and the term devops became popular in job ads.
The article is 1500 words at a rough count. Average reading speed is 250wpm, but for studying something, let's assume half of that: 1500/125 = 12 minutes of your time. Perhaps you toy around with it a little, run the code samples, and spend two hours learning. That's not a huge time investment. Assuming this is a good starting guide in the first place.
The objection isn't to the notion that "One can benefit from knowing fundamentals of an adjacent field". It's that this is "The bare minimum every developer must know". That's a much, much stronger claim.
I've come to see this sort of clickbait headline as playing on the prevalence of imposter-syndrome insecurity among devs, and try to ignore them on general principle.
Fair enough! I can kind of see the point that, if every developer knew some basics, it would help them make good decisions about their own projects, even if the answer is "no, this doesn't need ML". On the other hand, you're of course right that if you don't use ML, then it's clearly not something you "must" know to do your job well.
- You might want to use some ML in the project you are assigned next month
- It can help collaborating with someone who tackles that aspect of a project
- Fundamental knowledge helps you understand the "AI" stuff being marketed to your manager
The "I don't need this adjacent field" mentality feels familiar from schools I went to: first I did system administration where my classmates didn't care about programming because they felt like they didn't understand it anyway and they would never need it (scripting, anyone?); then I switched to a software development school where, guess what, the kids couldn't care about networking and they'd never need it anyway. I don't understand it, to me it's both interesting, but more practically: fast-forward five years and the term devops became popular in job ads.
The article is 1500 words at a rough count. Average reading speed is 250wpm, but for studying something, let's assume half of that: 1500/125 = 12 minutes of your time. Perhaps you toy around with it a little, run the code samples, and spend two hours learning. That's not a huge time investment. Assuming this is a good starting guide in the first place.