&gt; [...] I can&#x27;t think of a single situation where &quot;understanding several compilers&quot; would have helped me design&#x2F;maintain&#x2F;troubleshoot infrastructure I&#x27;m responsible for.<p>Oh, sure, you don&#x27;t need to understand how ELF binaries work, until you try to
do anything non-trivial to them (building chroot image anyone?). You also
don&#x27;t need to know how Ruby or Python work with modules, but I&#x27;ll want to stay
away from any your system where you happen to install a random recently
developed software, because it will be a mess.<p>&gt; But hey, looks like you&#x27;re not in my target market, and that&#x27;s ok!<p>Of course I&#x27;m not. What you proposed is a list for novice sysadmins,
except it doesn&#x27;t touch the essence of the craft, focusing instead on shiny
bells and whistles of limited applicability that will be obsolete five years
from now.