I guess it depends on how detailed one wants to "tech" film. The super-serious, anal-retentive, detail freak will expose a strip of film in a calibrated sensitometer and draw an D-logE curve to find ISO, contrast, gamma and shoulder/toe shapes. For b/w shooters, a curve would be created for each film/developer combination.
Such detail can be of help when selecting film (and/or developer) to better reproduce a specific scene, but is a bit more effort than all but the most die-hard photogs are willing to expend.
Nowadays, the curves and the resulting data can be easily obtained via software, but in the pre-computer days we made the curve, and mined the data, by hand using a flexible edge and lots of patience. It was a great learning experience.
If you're more interested, do a Google search for "photographic sensitometry".