What does it mean in programming: to study at the level of hardware, or at the level of software?

Question

Programming

I heard it many times, but I did not find a specific definition, can you explain?

Answer 1

At the level of hardware - implemented in the low-level firmware of the device or in general in hardware, in the form of non-flashable microcircuits. For example, a USB transceiver that converts a data packet to 8b/10b bit encoding. Change is difficult or impossible.
At the software level - implemented programmatically in a driver or application that interacts with the device.
For example, copying a file to a USB flash drive. It's easy to change - recompile the program.
sorry, I read your question on how to "change"
learning at the software level - figure out how to work with this garbage in order to be able to use it yourself, but not delve into the internal structure of the work, which you do not need to use.
learning at the level of iron - to understand exactly how the device works, to get to the lowest possible level in order to be able to create the same thing.
for example, to copy a file to a USB flash drive, you just need to learn how to work with fopen(), fwrite(), fclose() - this is the software level.
To understand how recording is actually done on a USB flash drive and create your own USB flash drive, you need to know how NAND works, what you need to connect and transfer via USB, what types of packages there are, the package format, up to writing your own firmware