Sciolism or On-Field Knowledge?

Over and Over I get involved in discussion about one knowledge or one other….
I have to put beforehand (once more) that I’m working in the Information Technology field, where the “sciolism of the book knowledge” is too many differs to the practice.
Books are filled of knowledge and terms that means everything and nothing at the same time, and practice is filled of exceptions.

What is the best approach to the real world of the Information Technology? Sciolism or On-Field Knowledge?
Well I think that both must exist to grant everyone a good survival chance through the pit traps of the IT projects, the stumble of the development languages and so on.


Yesterday I had a discussion about pure sciolism, where I am not very good, because I try not to answer a question with a “one shot” word.

“Indexes slow down the database”- has been told me.
Yes or No?
Neither, because the answer can be “It Depends!“. It depends if you are looking to the database when you are reading the data (so indexes speed up the database search) or when you are inserting the data (so the database has to create and sort the index, and this slow down the performances). In the end this question has both the answers if you do not specify the domain of your question in the appropriate way.

Sciolism can help you managing a tricky situation as a Quiz can be, but if it is not well set in a context it is useless as On-Field Knowledge cannot be demonstrated in a TV Show with some question.

The best way, as always, is the mixture of both!
…In Media Res Stat Virtus…

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Theory is when nothing works and everybody knows why.
Practice is when everything works and nobody knows why.
In our project we are perfectly mixing theory and practice: nothing works and nobody knows why