Brand knowledge

I have a tendency to get intimidated by stuff I'm unfamiliar with. "I'm an OCP", he declares and respect is immediately established. Afterall, he knows what a tablespace is.

But the more I learn, the more I ask, "Is this it?". The instructor makes a decent effort at teaching the course contents. As I look around though, it hits me that some things can't be taught in one day, or one week. The teacher writes some statement on the board. We all type away and feel happy about ourselves when the command runs successfully. Even more so if we missed out a character first time round and got some terrifying error message. And so the class goes on, to more complex statements.

It's a pity though that most guys don't really understand the mechanics of what they are doing. Faced with a query that's not written on the board for them to type, or for which a template isn't otherwise available, it's a real struggle. It's not their fault. In fact, considering some of their backgrounds, it's admirable the stuff they're able to do after just a couple of days. They'll get certificates indicating their knowledge of this and the other. CVs will declare proficiency in all sorts of things. I wonder what happens when they actually get those jobs.

The instructor, also, can't be expected to get across certain things in the duration given for the course. Will he talk about the intricacies of programming language constructs, or tell you what to type to get certain desired results. He himself probably took the same course so he couldn't help with that anyway. But who cares about concepts. All the boss cares about is results.

I was talking with one of my fellow students. He had indicated in the obligatory introductory session at the start of the class that he had just finished campus. "What were you doing?", I ask. "Computer science". I'm intrigued. "Where?". Such and such university. Interesting. "So, what kind of job would you like to do?". "DBA". Very interesting. "Just Oracle DBs or also stuff like SQL Server?". "Si SQL is part of Oracle". "No. No. No. SQL Server. As in ...". How do I describe what SQL Server is. To a computer science graduate. It doesn't shock me as much anymore this kind of sitution, but I'm still baffled. "Microsoft SQL Server. The Microsoft ...". "Oh, the one for windows...", he cuts me off as some quasi-recognition shows on his face. I don't pursue the issue any further. I'm just glad I didn't have to finish my description. "The Microsoft thingy" was going to be my next attempt at an explanation of what I was talking about. Onto my next question to fresh comp. science graduates. "Would you like to do some programming?". Actually, I don't know why I still ask this question. The answer is always the same. "NO!". Always delivered with such finality. He goes on to proudly declare how he didn't write any code for his final year project. "Good for you". What a pity.