>Learning to configure Sendmail via M4 macros, or struggling with an Apache virtual host setup is not real knowledge. If such a system one day is no longer in u

>Learning to configure Sendmail via M4 macros, or struggling with an Apache virtual host setup is not real knowledge. If such a system one day is no longer in use, what remains in your hands, or better, in your neurons? Nothing. This is ad-hoc knowledge. It is like junk food: empty calories without micronutrients. I agree with this. Too much time is spent in learning how to work with poorly designed interfaces. This sort of knowledge of man made, arbitrarily designed tools doesn't really teach us anything that applies outside the highly specific use case. And it will likely be obsolete within a couple few years. The half life of IT knowledge is short. While complex tools might be unavoidable, we need better ways to interface with them. And better documentation. People rely on SO and the like to understand how to interface with an API, decode cryptic error messages or configure some tool because the documentation and interfaces are often lacking.