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Benjamin Franz wrote:
> Hmmm...Hard one. I would say yes. Becoming a licensed professional
> engineer requires more than graduating with a engineering degree. It
> also required some (typically 4) years of experience before you are
> eligible for licensing and a grueling examination. The medical
> profession also uses a degree/testing/internship system. As does the
> legal profession.
>
> The pattern is pretty standard in the professions:
> education + testing/board + internship -> licensing
Actually, it's:
education + internship + testing/board -> licensing
But you knew that.
> Here is an interesting diagram from the National Society of Professional
> Engineers:
>
> http://www.nspe.org/etweb/1!-00-2000_Licensure_Model_Law.asp
That is interesting. In that model, a CS MS would be worth a year's
experience. Very funny.
The problem with licensing is garbage in, garbage out. Where does the
prospective software engineer get that professional education?
(Stanford? Cisco State?) Where does he/she intern? (Do they all go to
work for Lockheed? Do some work for ThoughtWorks?) How do you establish
competence when there are so few generally recognized good practices and
the ones that exist have so little justification? (Prophets spring up;
they attract followers. This is engineering?) Seems like a heckuva
bootstrap problem to me.
I personally think the only way to significantly improve programming is
for almost all humans to stop doing it.
Happy New Year.
Bob Foster
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