LS, I agree. A professional pilot should know automation but should be able to shut it all off and fly equally well. Some times that makes your work load less because you know where you want to go and pushing buttons sometimes doesn't do exactly what you want.

Another check airman was giving me a San Jose, Costa Rica check out as a new 757 captain and had the FMC so screwed up I just used raw data until he caught up. My flight directer was saying a descending left turn and I was doing a climbing right turn over the Volcano which was our clearance. I guess I never got out of the 727 mentality that nothing was automatic, just fly the f...g airplane. AF447 is an example of what automation dependency does to pilots.

All,
We should never forget that computers are are just dumb adding machines, garbage in=garbage out.