CDR: RE: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?
Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote:
Jeesh.
(From a practical standpoint, here in the Bay Area there is a growing oversupply of lawyers. According to the newspapers, modulo their biases and inaccuracies, many lawyer larvae are accepting "paralegal" positions. As with past "shortages of doctors" and "shortages of teachers," the boom-bust cycle continues. [...]
Doctors, lawyers, teachers... All three groups share a certain property: They have effective control over who may practice their profession. In their own self-interest, they act to stifle competition. There are, of course weasel words to justify this: 'maintaining standards' being the most common ones. Teacher's unions rail against merit pay and vouchers, which would provide some notion of a competitive market in education. The unions insist on a seniority system. They even attempt to ban volunteer part-time teachers on 'quality' grounds, so you can't go in and give a computer class if you wanted to, since you don't have a teaching degree. Similar points can be made about doctors, and the use of IANAL indicates the fevered grip the bar associations have on legal advice and representation. Howver, the teaching and medical professions can't act to increase their feedstock - uneducated-as-yet children and ailing people respectively. Idle tort lawyers can, and do, dream up new ways to sue and generally make the world a nastier place as they enrich themselves. Only rulers are worse. Imagine if the software business were like this - that the programmers of the late 40's had formed an American Programmers Association, and it was unlawful for anyone without APA certification to write code for money. Ditto for using software not blessed by the APA. Entrance to the hallowed membership would, of course, require a four year electrical engineering degree followed by a post graduate degree from an accredited computer school. I'll leave it to others to imagine the world with an APA. I think it would be a much poorer place. Peter Trei Disclaimer: the above represents my opinion only. IANAL.
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Trei, Peter wrote:
Entrance to the hallowed membership would, of course, require a four year electrical engineering degree followed by a post graduate degree from an accredited computer school.
I'll leave it to others to imagine the world with an APA. I think it would be a much poorer place.
Dude, do you read _Communications of the ACM_ ? Professional licensing of "software engineers" is a fact in Texas. Not an issue goes by without someone piping up about how great it would be if every state followed that lead. Some discussion and context from licensing of other kinds of engineers is at http://www.construx.com/stevemcc/gr-badges.htm An "American Programmer's Association" may be closer than you think. -David
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, dmolnar wrote:
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Trei, Peter wrote:
Entrance to the hallowed membership would, of course, require a four year electrical engineering degree followed by a post graduate degree from an accredited computer school.
I'll leave it to others to imagine the world with an APA. I think it would be a much poorer place.
Dude, do you read _Communications of the ACM_ ? Professional licensing of "software engineers" is a fact in Texas.
No, it isn't. I have lived in Texas for 34 of my 40 years and written software for income the last 23 years. My current job title is 'Senior Software Engineer' and I don't even have a degree. While it is true I can't use any term with 'Engineer' in it for personal business without a degree (you used to not need this), 5 years of apprenticeship to a current PE, and pass a test (though my employer can call me an 'engineer' or whatever with no regulation), there are no legal requirements for same either. You can get a 'Professional Engineer' certification but it is not specificaly in programming. It includes a bunch of crap out of EE & ME as well. There IS a lot of talk about it but there is NO requirement for licensing as a 'Professional Engineer' in Tx. It probably won't pass since the vast majority of programmers I work with are dead against it. I'm afraid that if this is what the ACM is passing around, they got it wrong. ____________________________________________________________________ He is able who thinks he is able. Buddha The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's another link on licensing of software engineers, this time from the ACM: http://www.acm.org/serving/se_policy/report.html it seems that cryptographic/security software, if we ever get the liability structure whose lack is often pointed out by Schneier ("we don't have good security because we don't have to"), may be a prime target for such licensing. -david
At 02:42 PM 9/18/00 -0400, dmolnar wrote:
Here's another link on licensing of software engineers, this time from the
it seems that cryptographic/security software, if we ever get the liability structure whose lack is often pointed out by Schneier ("we don't have good security because we don't have to"), may be a prime target for such licensing.
-david
The notion of licensing programmers as competent in some field has come up before, e.g., in safety-critical systems. The idea being that when you're sued because your radiation therapy machine fried a few people, you (the manufacturer) can show 'due diligance' aka best practices. Using DES, then 3DES, then AES is the same cover-your-ass protection. Of course, a firm is still responsible for its bridges that fail, even if it used state-licensed engineers and reviewers and followed standard practices. But the penaltie$ are less if you snag engineers qualified to work in the domain. ..... I believe in Texas or some other state you can't call yourself an engineer since that is a legal term.
Imagine if the software business were like this - that the programmers of the late 40's had formed an American Programmers Association, and it was unlawful for anyone without APA certification to write code for money. Ditto for using software not blessed by the APA. Entrance to the hallowed membership would, of course, require a four year electrical engineering degree followed by a post graduate degree from an accredited computer school.
I'll leave it to others to imagine the world with an APA. I think it would be a much poorer place.
Yeah, but we probably wouldn't have Windows either. It might be a fair trade... -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
participants (6)
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David Honig -
dmolnar -
Jim Choate -
Marcel Popescu -
petro -
Trei, Peter