Knowing fundamentals gives you deeper intuition about the technology, at every layer. When compilers appeared, you no longer needed to understand assembly and registers. But knowing how assembly and registers actually work makes you better at C. When Python came along, low-level languages felt unnecessary. But understanding C's memory management is what lets you understand Python's limitations. Now LLMs write the implementation. LLMs abstract away the code. But knowing how algorithms work, even in a high-level language like Python, is exactly how you catch LLM mistakes and inefficiencies.

Knowledge builds on knowledge. We learn basic math before advanced math for a reason. The pyramid keeps accumulating from what came before. Understanding the fundamentals still matters, I think.