These delusions come from experience with watching programmers flop around like fish out of water whenever some layer of abstraction they took for granted starts "leaking".
I honestly don't get this attitude in our industry. Nobody tells a general practitioner, "Nah, you don't really need to know what comprises a living cell. You most likely won't even need to drop down to that level."
Just because you don't need to do any low level work, doesn't mean you shouldn't learn anything about it.
This is exactly the sort of nonsense I'm talking about. When, you fool? Do you think most business apps need to do some crazy algos or something that would benefit from C?
If you think most programmers who know Java, C#, Ruby or, Python have ever dropped down to C you're deluding yourself. And they never need to and not only that the majority of their performance problems come from poorly written SQL queries. And the rest come from poorly conceived loops.
As I said, go get a job in a normal company, open your eyes. Most job applications will not give you an advantage if you put the ability to drop down to C on your CV. Because they will never, ever, ever need it.
I honestly don't get this attitude in our industry. Nobody tells a general practitioner, "Nah, you don't really need to know what comprises a living cell. You most likely won't even need to drop down to that level."
Just because you don't need to do any low level work, doesn't mean you shouldn't learn anything about it.