On 06/07/2015 09:28 AM, Randy Bush wrote:
i assume, but have zero actual knowledge/experience, that certification courses/programs actually cover all the corners and minutiae of a subject such as is-is. so you come out knowing all the options and details, 42% of which you will use; or maybe 24% if you are parsimonious.
while i no longer have spare room in my head for a lot of stuff i will not use, having some clue about what's outside my current practice zone would be useful. if i was young and had spare brain cells and time, i might read through the course ware and do some playing in the lab. but you can't move packets on pieces of paper.
Putting on my "professor's kid" hat: Education is *supposed* to be about learning how to find answers when you need them. How to understand what you find. Yes, there are a number of basic things you need to do "by rote" and from memory (especially "muscle memory"), but when you run into the one-percent cases, you need to know where to look and how to apply what your search turns up. "[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think." -- Albert Einstein