It has been said, “Not everything that is learned is contained in books.” Compare and contrast knowledge gained from experience with knowledge gained from books. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?

If you remember the adage - experience is the best teacher - you'll definitely prefer knowledge gained from experience to knowledge gained from books. Personally, I prefer knowledge gained from experience to that gained from books because one needs to put into practice knowledge gained from books, one needs to acquire experience to be able to develop his own methods of doing things and one needs experience to be able to combine two or more methods and save time in a production setting.

First, when you read book to acquire knowledge, you need to put into practice, the knowledge being passed on, to gain experience and have the confidence that you understood what was taught in the book. For example when I was learning software development, I bought a couple of books that I read over and over again but could not clearly explain the skills that were taught in those books. However, the moment I began to develop software using the techniques in those books, I was able gain so much confidence that overtime, I could demonstrate the skills without reading through the books word for word. Practicing the skills learnt in those books helped me gain confidence.

Also, Books cannot teach you the entire techniques you can apply towards delivering a product. While books will help you to gain the basic knowledge and even some advanced knowledge in a particular trade, one needs experience to develop and own a technique. For example, in the cause of practicing software engineering, I developed an easier way to bind an image to a grid and display it to users. If I not for experience, I would still have been using textbook methods of binding images to a grid.

Finally, craftsmen learnt their trades by serving as apprentices to trade masters. These masters are considered to be very good in the crafts and their apprentices learn from the wealth of their experience. Systematically, the master craftsman teaches his students methodologies and the various stages in the production of this particular goods. The apprentices learn this knowledge and apply them. Through the experience of the master, they also learn how to combine steps in other to save time. They are able to combine steps because they have garnered experience over time. With books, they have to follow the procedure step by step which will require more time to complete than when two or more of these steps are combined. Obviously Experience saves time.

In conclusion, I prefer knowledge gained through experience over knowledge gained through books because, you need experience to firm up whatever you studied in the books. Without putting into practice what you learnt in books, they will gradually fade with time, but knowledge gained through experience does not fade away easily.