How would we regulate software engineers? Badly. We don't yet know how to reliably balance desirable goals in software development, such as delivering a certai

How would we regulate software engineers? Badly. We don't yet know how to reliably balance desirable goals in software development, such as delivering a certain level of quality and reliability, or delivering on time and on budget. That immediately undermines aspects such as proof of competence or ongoing training that are usually associated with regulated professions. Moreover, I imagine the people in the industry who would be closest to getting these things right are probably too busy working on building real systems to spend much time teaching or assessing. If government officials started trying to set up a professional accreditation scheme for software developers with real legal weight, how many people here seriously believe the result would not be exams in Agile Software Craftsmanship Manifesto Driven Development, written and assessed by high profile and no doubt highly paid consultants whose total contribution to actual working code in high reliability or otherwise important systems is less than the contributions of at least half the people reading this comment? We're not ready yet. With luck, we might be within at least some of our lifetimes, but I wouldn't bet much money on it. And in the meantime, any attempt to set this up would surely be subject to instant regulatory capture by exactly the kind of vultures our industry needs to move away from if standards are going to improve.