The biggest is probably that teaching diving is a static target. There are small incremental changes as we learn more about diving physiology and as new technologies come online, but the same training we delivered 20 years ago will still make a safe diver today.

Technology is a moving target. A technology certification 20 years ago, even 5 years ago, would be pretty worthless. Technologies come and go, concepts come and go and come back again (centralized, distributed, back to centralized but renamed cloud computing).

Another big difference is the technology and user interfaces. In Scuba, the technology has a fundamentally limited set of options and parameters. While a dive computer is a fairly complex machine, the information exchange with the user is very constrained, being not much more than current depth, dive time, maybe the amount of air left, and time remaining at depth. Compare that to the information on, say, a simple invoice – the processing is simpler but the information exchange with the user is much greater.

Having said all that, I was going to add something more constructive but I have to go and make dinner. So sorry, terribly sorry, but I must end now. I was just checking you were still in GA and couldn’t help but add something.

Cheers, Neil.