Most education will not give you ambition, nerves or moral, it will not make you a fighter. However it gives you knowledge, and sometimes knowledge is key.

So just walking about with a lot of knowledge won’t make you a success. You have to throw yourself into action, the right action, and make things happen, even if you’re stomach screams no. Forward is the way to go. That will give you ambition, nerves and moral. You have to build yourself in a way.

I do what I have to do in order to achieve my objectives, with common sence ofcourse. And if that includes having to get an education, so be it.

So if I were ‘trolling for hits’ I might say something like “knowledge and experience are both irrelevant”… so if we leave the theoretical for a second – and try to get at what we’re really talking about – we’re trying to figure out how to decide who will be a good player for our team – and we usually do this when we interview potential candidates for a development position…..

So – knowing that we’re really talking about who we want to hire to help us do something, I’d say “how experienced” or “how knowledgable” are really secondary questions that help us to get at the root of what we’re looking for…..

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

I don’t care if you have a Ph.D. in compiler design if you can’t build a straightforward, elegant web app (if that’s your problem space) to solve a particular business problem.

I don’t care if you’ve been programming since 1952, and you used to eat lunch with Alan Turing himself… if you can’t piece together current technology to solve current problems – it doesn’t mean anything to me.

… so are knowledge and experience important – yes – BUT – they’re extremely difficult to nail down objectively AND they’re ONLY a tool for finding out what someone is capable of doing. But, if we have other tools for doing that – we shouldn’t let either of them dictate anything to us……