I believe you may have misunderstood what I wrote.  Oliver Heaviside had 

NO formal academic diplomata, but was fully professional with the 

necessary credentials as demonstrated by knowledge, understanding, and 

skills -- including making fundamental contributions to mathematics, 

engineering, physics, etc.  I explicitly am not discussing either 

legitimate academic diplomata nor vendor-based credentials/certificates. 

  You evidently have the sort of credentials that I was discussing. 

However, this is not meant to denigrate a legitimate earned academic 

diploma -- a diploma may (*MAY*) be sufficient, but is not necessary -- 

except for those entities that require such diplomata or certificates 

for a person to be allowed to work.  Thus, in the USA, a medical doctor 

has to have a diploma to get a license to practice medicine; at my 

university, unfortunately, today a person such as Heaviside could not be 

allowed to join the Faculty, and definitely not the tenure-stream 

Faculty.  My university looks at the bar-code, as it were, not the 

actual contents.



On 12/31/20 4:42 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 2:19 PM Yasha Karant <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>>

>> I fully agree concerning an engineering background.

>>

>> However, any good practitioner (with, like Heaviside, credentials

>> equivalent to both academic intellectual education and practical field

>> experience, irrespective of formal diplomata -- today, the diploma seems

>> the most important and a Heaviside probably would be impossible) should

>> have the requisite software engineering techniques and skills.  My

> 

> *Hah*. I studied bio-electrical engineering, computer courses were a

> requirement but not the focus of my interest. A dozen years in the

> field supporting lab systems gave enough expertise to provide

> some..... expertise, enough to nearly double my income when I shifted

> to private industry. There is a great deal of skilled engineering and

> medicine that I'd much rather be performed by a less credentialed

> person with more practical experience.

>