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.
>