Not much if you do not need to accomplish much. Software; is a tool. The tool gains complexity as the task at hand gets more intricate. This is the general philosophy at the base of most software. So learning more than you need to know is not a waste of time; but it definitely does not make you efficient either. Time spent learning auxiliary knowledge is time off your skill optimization. Here I try explore what it took to get this blog up and running.
There is a category done on how stuff like websites generally work albeit with some technical explanations. Reading posts under this category might give a deeper idea of how stuff works; nerd out!
A little background, I have a degree in computer technology; a sister thing to computer science. As I write this; I am under the apprenticeship of a senior(er) web software developer. He is has his degree in mechanical engineering. A degree is not a necessity but doors open with more ease if you have one. It does not matter which; just have one.
Back to business; here is a brief breakdown of what you would need to know to get this blog running as is.
The content you see is done by HTML(Hyper Text Mark-up-Language) . It is responsible for defining order in content like; paragraphing and sectioning. The colors, appearance (font and spacing) are controlled by another language called CSS(Cascading Style Sheets). The behavior you experience; stuff like, drop down, notices and loading bars are all done in JavaScript.
All the stuff you see is stored in a database. Think of it as a box of puzzle pieces. It also holds data on how this puzzle pieces relate to form the larger picture. Every time data is requested from it, say a post, it also contains the intelligence to know what comments relate to the post. The language running this is SQL(Server Query Language).
The content is fetched from a database by a controller. The controller from context does business logic or ‘controls’, as the term implies. It is simply responsible for listening to your request (I want this blog), calls appropriate data from the database, and returns it back for your viewing. This controller has been done in Ruby language.
To do these things, there are standard things that one should perform or principles to abide by for stuff to work. These procedures would have to be done over for each project. If every developer in the world did this, patterns would emerge. Understand that productive time is time spent doing stuff unique to the project. The time spent writing stuff that should exist every time is tedious. To avoid this; frameworks exist. These frameworks do the work you were supposed to do, the common stuff, and frees you to do the unique stuff. Things unique to that project. The frame work running this blog is called; ‘Ruby on Rails’, shortened to ‘Rails’.
The software requires hardware to live. Just like you need the device you are using to access this hosted blog. You will need to understand how software relates to hardware. You can do a lot with high level knowledge but you would be efficient by miles if you have depth in this particular field. People working this world use a variety of languages; I used Python language to do the hosting. The specialist are known as Developer Operations Engineers (DevOps).
Do you need to know all of the above? No. You definitely do not need to; unless, you want to become a self contained IT department. Each field has its own sub set of specializations too. So even specializing will require more compromise but such are the joys of rabbit holes.
People who specialize in ‘what people see’ are called ‘front end developers’. Ones who specialize in the ‘logic behind what people see’ are called ‘back end developers’. Ones who specialize in how the two section merge and upload it to a larger computer (server) for all to see are called ‘developer operations engineers’. By book they may not be actual trained engineers but they deserve the respect; engineers.
Remember, to be efficient, you need to use the bare minimum to achieve the most. I try to do that to most projects I am involved in. Sometimes, on edge occasions, you might need to do or learn more than it is necessary just so you can have an easier time in the future. What really matters in software development is whether your code did what it was supposed to. Nothing is set in stone.