CDR: RE: was: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?

[Jim Choate]

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.

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