I used to be a mining engineer since 1985, and practiced Shotcrete - spray fiber reinforced concrete for tunnel supporting 1,000 feet underground.
I came to Canada in 1998, and have been a drywall finisher for the last 20 years.
My friend Chris Fraser taught me how to do drywall taping. He was an old school taper, pre-fill every joint with hot mud, and embedding paper taper by hands. He didn’t like automatic taper, never even wanted to give it a try. He believed that without pre-fill, just use a bazooka to apply tape to cover the joints, leave the gaps hollow without fully filled with taping mud, the joints will crack when stresses come to the walls. He was right! Almost every cracked joint I have ever fixed in the last 20 years were exactly like that, no mud in the joint!