>> is learning not useful?
>
> Depends on your point of view.
>
> On the one hand, knowing stuff always holds the possibility that one day 
> it'll somehow be useful.

But if you spend your whole life learning, you'll run out of time to do 
anything useful with it :-)

> On the other hand, what possible purpose could there be to knowing how to 
> build an RS Flip-Flop from two NOR latches?

Those skills will be a useful base to learn more complex things, and also to 
use as part of more complex projects.

See how your knowledge of transistors helped you when you were first wiring 
up your logic gate? Ermm.. hang on... :-)

Well your skill of wiring up logic gates might one day help with something 
else.  If you want a real life example then on the LCDs we design here along 
one edge of the glass it is pretty much just a huge chain of logic gates 
that clock the display data into the DACs for each column of pixels, then 
each row is clocked active in turn to connect the output of each DAC to 
every pixel in that row.  Somebody has to design that, more people need to 
understand it in great detail, and even more people need to roughly 
understand how it works.  I'm sure there are a huge number of jobs where 
knowing the details of logic gates it a requirement.

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