POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Basic arithmetic : Re: Basic arithmetic Server Time
29 Jul 2024 02:31:02 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Basic arithmetic  
From: Jim Henderson
Date: 13 Mar 2013 17:52:09
Message: <5140f509$1@news.povray.org>
On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:28:07 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Well, that's the thing. In the Real World, it's trivial to look up what
> some specific obscure option does.

Removing a package is, arguably, not an obscure option one would use 
occasionally.

I had a similar debate with a physics prof once in college - the course 
was for engineering students, but I was a CS student, so I'd have 
reference materials available to ensure that I was coding the forumulas 
properly in my simulation - and if I didn't remember the exact formula 
for calculating lift based on a particular airfoil shape, I wouldn't 
guess, I'd look it up.

"Not good enough".

And of course, I lost the debate, because it was the professor's class 
and he got to decide what was important and what wasn't.

Years later, it occurred to me that he did have a point (though I still 
maintain he was applying it incorrectly by assuming all students were 
engineering students and grading everyone as such, but that's a separate 
issue).  There are some things that, while you *can* look them up, if 
you're competent, you should never *need* to look up.

Remember that a certification exam is a measure of a minimally qualified 
candidate to do a particular job or task.  A minimally qualified 
candidate on Linux *should* be able to install/remove packages without 
having to look the command up every time they do it.

Jim


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