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Yeah, and thats when you know "tech" has actually changed the world instead of just imagining it does. A civil engineer pointed out to me that the licenses com

Yeah, and thats when you know "tech" has actually changed the world instead of just imagining it does. A civil engineer pointed out to me that the licenses come when it really starts to affect people and infrastructure. Programming does this by proxy, but not directly enough yet. New York State's bitlicense was the closest to burdening software engineers with licensing requirements, until the one person at the head of the financial agency clarified it wasn't intended to be interpreted that way, and modified the wording of the law.

nightski 10y ago
So one can't change the world unless lives are endangered. That doesn't seem very logical.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Making people's phones overheat and changing file extensions on their PCs isn't enough of a problem Thats all it comes down to. When programmers are doing things that actually endanger people's lives directly, actually alter the physical living environment directly, then you will see governing authorities pushing for licenses.
  - dv_dt 10y ago
    Engineers design passenger aircraft, rockets, cars, and medical devices without needing licenses - the products themselves are strongly regulated. Requiring the engineers developing the product to carry licenses will just raise the overhead cost of developing such products. I think the key difference is certifying the product when there are multiple instances of the product being made is cheaper. For civil engineering, most of the projects are unique (and even if the design is something of a copy - then the sites present unique challenges). So maybe it makes more sense there to license the engineers.
  - tim333 10y ago
    >When programmers are doing things that actually endanger people's lives directly... Toyota famously had some issues with their software and fatalities. It'd be hard to license software development though because it's such a quickly changing field. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643204

nightski 10y ago

So one can't change the world unless lives are endangered. That doesn't seem very logical.

cloudjacker 10y ago
Making people's phones overheat and changing file extensions on their PCs isn't enough of a problem Thats all it comes down to. When programmers are doing things that actually endanger people's lives directly, actually alter the physical living environment directly, then you will see governing authorities pushing for licenses.
- dv_dt 10y ago
  Engineers design passenger aircraft, rockets, cars, and medical devices without needing licenses - the products themselves are strongly regulated. Requiring the engineers developing the product to carry licenses will just raise the overhead cost of developing such products. I think the key difference is certifying the product when there are multiple instances of the product being made is cheaper. For civil engineering, most of the projects are unique (and even if the design is something of a copy - then the sites present unique challenges). So maybe it makes more sense there to license the engineers.
- tim333 10y ago
  >When programmers are doing things that actually endanger people's lives directly... Toyota famously had some issues with their software and fatalities. It'd be hard to license software development though because it's such a quickly changing field. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9643204