>We absolutely should because it's a fundamental aspect of doing their job A rather trivially learned part of their job. It has little bearing on their ability

>We absolutely should because it's a fundamental aspect of doing their job A rather trivially learned part of their job. It has little bearing on their ability to build a beautiful cabinet. >The difference between me and a professional carpenter is literally the ability to use tools effectively to build an item It's much more than that. How about Michelangelo? Do you think the only difference between you and him is that he's had more practice with a chisel? Doubtful. >It's like theoretical CS vs. real-world programming. It's good to know sorting strategies and whatnot, but knowing how to use the tools is what gets stuff done. This is the lone of thinking that leads hiring managers to build teams of mediocre devs with a lot of buzzwords in their CV. I don't care so much that you know e.g. C#, I care that you are a great problem solver. If you have that part down I'm fine with investing a little time into you so that you can learn C#, ASP.NET, whatever. The latter bit is easy.