Having worked for the state, I learned licensing is about protecting jobs of the license holders now protecting the public. Case in point. You need to go to school for two years to be a beautician. You only need to go to school for six months to be a Cop and carry a gun.

To be clear the idea of education and operational standards is a good idea I just believe your idea would lead to institutionalized and licensed stupid that is very hard to change instead of real sane standards.

I don't know if standards imposed from on high can even be formulated in a way that improves rather than ossifies in the long term your concept may even be broken just in context of current affairs but unfix-ably broken in all possible worlds.

It seems insanely optimistic to suppose that any licensing requirement implemented in scope of the current regime would be anything but will anything other than food stamps for whomever manages develops and implements licensing and manages the training process not least of which bureaucracies in schools.

Little of it will even stick to the hands of those who actually do the teaching.

Barbers used to perform surgery.

I wonder if in the future there's going to be a divergence in the field of software between programmers who do the software equivalent of haircuts <insert PHP joke here> and those who do the "hard work", whatever that will be.

We already have people that perform the software equivalent of rocket brain surgery...

ANFSCD: Have a free laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

This hasn't been a thing since what over a century. This is not why the requirements exist.

Because they won't appreciate historical context?