Being a mechanic might make you a better driver, and will certainly make you less reliant on mechanics...
Neither of these things are always true. This is something that tinkerers often struggle to grok.
Consider that the safest way to travel from one place to another is probably on a plane: The vehicle which you are least likely to understand. Moreover, even if you do understand modern jet aircraft and the airlines that fly them, that knowledge won't do you much good, because you have very few knobs which you're empowered to turn. But they constitute a very highly-designed system involving reliable avionics backed-up by redundant highly trained and well-rehearsed pilots with their lives on the line. And the statistics show that you're not going to improve on that. So sit back and have a ginger ale and wait for the plane to land.
As with travel, so with many things in our modern world. Does knowing something about cryptography (a) make you significantly less reliant on professional cryptographers, or (b) make your software more secure? According to security experts I've read, the answers are (a) no, unless you want your software to be less secure and (b) perhaps, but only if you fully appreciate the answer to (a). If knowing a few things about crypto tempts you to deploy crypto that you implemented yourself, it's actually counterproductive if the goal is to produce secure production software.
(As a hobby or an educational toy, of course, I'm obviously a big fan of tinkering. But not everyone needs to have the same hobby.)
Neither of these things are always true. This is something that tinkerers often struggle to grok.
Consider that the safest way to travel from one place to another is probably on a plane: The vehicle which you are least likely to understand. Moreover, even if you do understand modern jet aircraft and the airlines that fly them, that knowledge won't do you much good, because you have very few knobs which you're empowered to turn. But they constitute a very highly-designed system involving reliable avionics backed-up by redundant highly trained and well-rehearsed pilots with their lives on the line. And the statistics show that you're not going to improve on that. So sit back and have a ginger ale and wait for the plane to land.
As with travel, so with many things in our modern world. Does knowing something about cryptography (a) make you significantly less reliant on professional cryptographers, or (b) make your software more secure? According to security experts I've read, the answers are (a) no, unless you want your software to be less secure and (b) perhaps, but only if you fully appreciate the answer to (a). If knowing a few things about crypto tempts you to deploy crypto that you implemented yourself, it's actually counterproductive if the goal is to produce secure production software.
(As a hobby or an educational toy, of course, I'm obviously a big fan of tinkering. But not everyone needs to have the same hobby.)