If we had mandatory security certifications, Reddit wouldn't exist. Nor, for that matter, would Windows. And while many of us would probably rejoice at that, I think a lot of people would be pretty pissed off if they had to use OpenBSD.
BTW, I interned at a company that does avionics/medical devices/financial software. Those industries do have strong regulations, like mandatory code reviews and traceability matrices. And that's great for what they do, but I'd hate to see the same standards applied to your Web 2.0 social bookmarking site.
Rebuttal here: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2007/07/04/certification-pl...
The security certification is a wonderful idea! I think that would be a great place to start. (And end, perhaps.) The test for this could be entirely empirical. An applicant could be required to place $1000 in escrow, and implement a web application on the guild's servers. They would be required to add certain features. During the test, anyone would be welcome to try and hack the website. If anyone can prove that they are successful, they get the $1000. If the features all get implemented with no hacking, then the applicant gets their money back, minus the fee.
In other words: the market does do something, but someone could do even better.
The industry doesn't need to the government to penalize non-guild programmers to benefit from a guild. All the guild has to do is to show that it is effective in producing competent, knowledgeable programmers. I suspect that things like employment at Microsoft have filled this niche. (Sub-optimally.) An organization that is designed to fulfill this particular purpose would be much better at its function and more robust.
A majority of US drivers think they are above average. I have met very few under-qualified programmers who realized it.
No, but that seemed to be what the commenter I replied to was advocating.
I think you could base it entirely on empirical results -- successful programming projects being the sole measure of value.
Come to think of it, Open Source projects somewhat fill this role.
"...bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses."
So either the graduate is knowledgeable and the system did its job, or the graduate knows how to be a good member of a big bureaucratic organization and how to accomplish arbitrary things they're told to do.
Sounds like one more level of sorting, and the schools have done the job for big companies.
The benefits of college are benefits because you cannot get them otherwise. It is a fallacy to claim otherwise.
I don't think he was arguing that nobody should do 4 years of college. Just that employers need a better vetting system.