All very good points. However, my point is that a student who can't use tools effectively is hampered in their studies. This isn't about getting jobs, just abou

All very good points. However, my point is that a student who can't use tools effectively is hampered in their studies. This isn't about getting jobs, just about being able to do their lab studies effectively. I recall the student who had spent (by his account) half a day trying to find a bug in his program. When he enlisted my help, I pulled up a debugger (which he was supposed to have learned, according to the syllabus) and found the bug in moments. Or the software engineering project groups in my SE courses. They were all supposed to be using source code control. The ones who actually used it all reported that it helped immensely. The others produced uniformly poorer work. Learning how to use tools effectively helps a student to do better lab work, and therefore reinforces the theoretical principles we are trying to teach.