"We are constantly inventing new and better ways to write software". Name one "new" thing in the last 10 years. Whatever you come up with, I bet there is a reasonable analog from 20 or even 30 years ago. We know practically nothing concrete about software development. Even the concepts of RAD and Agile which are so popular today have been around for 30 years.

"Also remember, this is the guy who gave the world C++". Yes, one of the most popular object oriented languages that is still suitable for systems programming. What of it? For all the complaining about C++ as an ideal tool, it's been incredibly successful as a practical tool. I don't use it, but I have a lot of respect for what it has done.

I currently make my living with Linux, and yet I get this nagging feeling that if programmers were licensed, I would have to have learned any number of Microsoft technologies (OLE, COM, DCOM, ActiveX, .Net) depending on when I got licensed.

I entered college in 1987. Windows 2.x had just come out (I think)---OS/2 wasn't even being designed as of yet. The Intel 386 had just come out, and major application design in PCs in assembly had just passed in favor of C or Pascal. I couldn't even have comprehended my job today (programming wise---web based applications written in PHP) back then.

Yes, there hasn't really been anything "new" in the past 20 years (except maybe for ubiquitous networking) but the details sure have changed a lot.

Whether or not an appropriate, relevant licensing scheme would be developed is a different issue from whether or not it could be developed.

As for the details changing, yes, programming has changed a lot, but programming is such a small part of any project.