Early in my career 20 years ago I built backend, GIS and database applications without fully grasping their inner mechanics. Facing performance issues, racing conditions bug and even corruption often left me helpless.
I resolved to truly understand the workings of database systems, ensuring I knew every query from my app and its execution in the db and what I choose to make as a transaction and what I make into an atomic query.
From that day I have been fascinated by pursuing deep understanding of what is happening behind the scenes in software especially in backend engineering.