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