I'm one of those people who when I learn anything, I take hand written no matter what it is. I've even had language books tell me, " You probably won't need to do this" and I make sure to add it in anyway. And when that 1% time comes, my first reaction is always to the clear and detailed description that I myself wrote down. This has happened several times, ( a lot when I was getting my feet wet in server administration ). As someone who like to learn ot all no matter how out of context for the enviornment, I much prefer when stuff like this happens. I'd rather know how to do something as a just in case, then panic because I don't know something at all.
It does seem paradoxical, but I know quite a few people I consider to be good coders, but know almost nothing about DNS. For example, a former researcher in CS who now wants to launch his webstartup.