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. >