4 ms·

A big part of it is that what we do is literal magic to the uninitiated. We wave incantations with our hands upon the keyboards, and the uninitiated do not unde

by pnathan 10y ago

A big part of it is that what we do is literal magic to the uninitiated. We wave incantations with our hands upon the keyboards, and the uninitiated do not understand how this turns into the world we have. It's invisible, untouchable, and and the expert wizards have collectively refused to provide a meaningful system for determining what is good vs what is bad. In other industries there are things like certifications that mean something or guilds/unions/associations where membership means something, in the software world, the gurus have refused to build an association/certification system of meaning, citing libertarian ideas against it. Since this helps the forces against labor, our management likes that idea too.

Sunset 10y ago
I would eat my own hat before I let a "guild council" dictate anything that could impact my code style or the way I do things. The lack of centralized control is a good thing. In other industries you can be barred from even working in the field if the "council" doesn't like you. Things like the lawyers' bar are complete bullshit as a concept in themselves.
- mdpopescu 10y ago
  People who "made it" are always trying to restrict the field. The excuses are many - protecting the poor, the quality, the children... but the reality is always "we are afraid of the competition".
- pnathan 10y ago
  > I would eat my own hat before I let a "guild council" dictate anything that could impact my code style or the way I do things. That attitude is exactly why we have quality and fad problems. ::shrug::
  - WkndTriathlete 10y ago
    That attitude is also why we have nice things like Linux and AWS.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      Are you sure about that? MS and Windows came about in a world with his attitude. If we had had a guild, would Windows have become the dominant desktop OS? Or would UNIX have persisted instead, and Linux never been invented (as a reaction to MS's dominance and the demise of UNIX)? Besides, isn't the argument here that a guild would enforce more conformity upon professional programmers? Linux wasn't made by professionals, in the beginning; it was made by a college student who then collaborated with other academics. A guild can't prevent that, any more than it can prevent people from buying copper pipe and fittings from Home Depot and fixing their own plumbing. And further, how long did it take before companies really started taking Linux seriously? It was ages before free and open-source software finally got (mostly) past the attitudes that hindered its adoption in corporations. I don't see how a guild would have changed this at all.
    - wavefunction 10y ago
      Linux is centrally controlled by Linus and AWS is centrally controlled by Amazon. I guess I'm missing your connections between those two things and de-centralised control.
- eecc 10y ago
  Well, I've been touting a guild to break out of the horse trader circle where you're evaluated from the keyword search on your cv, the alternative being worse: codility. What's wrong in having a professional guild that makes you more than an FTE?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Things like the lawyers' bar are complete bullshit as a concept in themselves. Since at this point the marginal benefit to the populace for each additional lawyer is negative, I'm glad the Bar has done even the little it has to limit the number of lawyers. I certainly wouldn't want to see an even less regulated market in lawyer service... eventually when most coders are coding pay2win games we'll have some regulations imposed from outside.
lacampbell 10y ago
in the software world, the gurus have refused to build an association/certification system of meaning, citing libertarian ideas against it. Associations and certifications don't necessarily have to involve the government. Various professions in various countries have non-government certifications that are well regarded (one such example would be a Bachelors Degree). Unless you are making the arguing that libertarians are opposed to certification in general, whether the state is involved or not. In which case you've completely lost me.
- pnathan 10y ago
  - I'm being slightly loose with my terminology: the general libertarian notion (as expressed by a sibling comment) that "the Man Isn't Supposed To Control Us, Ever, At All" is what I'm meaning. - A Bachelor's degree is well regarded, but it is not sufficient to demonstrate competence. A working certification system demonstrates competence on the part of the certification-holder. The problem with having no government involved in these things is that inevitably someone is going to ask a software engineer to do something that's "Legal But Unethical", and the question at hand winds up being: can the person be fired for this(remember, this is the engineer's career and livelihood)? And here we find the Law being involved. Or we find that building really bad software impacts people's quality of life in measurable ways, but the market won't improve the software. Infrastructurally, this requires a coordinated effort. This specifically is why unions and the law's intruding are so entangled: companies can be extraordinarily abusive to their employees; they can also be abusive to their customers (monopolies are distrusted for this very reason). And the proper recourses here involve significant fines and/or jail time - meaningful mechanisms of discouraging misbehavior.
- barry-cotter 10y ago
  > Various professions in various countries have non-government certifications that are well regarded (one such example would be a Bachelors Degree). Degrees are an absolutely awful example of a non-government certification. They're given out by institutions that are almost universally state founded, run and regulated. The US probably has the most private universities as a proportion of universities of any nation and I doubt they break 30%.
nradov 10y ago
The IEEE attempted to fix this by writing the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) and building a certification program around it. But that effort seems to be mostly dead: the guide hasn't been updated since 2004 and few people have taken the certification exam. https://www.computer.org/web/swebok https://www.computer.org/web/swebok

by pnathan 10y ago

Sunset 10y ago

I would eat my own hat before I let a "guild council" dictate anything that could impact my code style or the way I do things. The lack of centralized control is a good thing. In other industries you can be barred from even working in the field if the "council" doesn't like you. Things like the lawyers' bar are complete bullshit as a concept in themselves.

mdpopescu 10y ago
People who "made it" are always trying to restrict the field. The excuses are many - protecting the poor, the quality, the children... but the reality is always "we are afraid of the competition".
pnathan 10y ago
> I would eat my own hat before I let a "guild council" dictate anything that could impact my code style or the way I do things. That attitude is exactly why we have quality and fad problems. ::shrug::
- WkndTriathlete 10y ago
  That attitude is also why we have nice things like Linux and AWS.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Are you sure about that? MS and Windows came about in a world with his attitude. If we had had a guild, would Windows have become the dominant desktop OS? Or would UNIX have persisted instead, and Linux never been invented (as a reaction to MS's dominance and the demise of UNIX)? Besides, isn't the argument here that a guild would enforce more conformity upon professional programmers? Linux wasn't made by professionals, in the beginning; it was made by a college student who then collaborated with other academics. A guild can't prevent that, any more than it can prevent people from buying copper pipe and fittings from Home Depot and fixing their own plumbing. And further, how long did it take before companies really started taking Linux seriously? It was ages before free and open-source software finally got (mostly) past the attitudes that hindered its adoption in corporations. I don't see how a guild would have changed this at all.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    Linux is centrally controlled by Linus and AWS is centrally controlled by Amazon. I guess I'm missing your connections between those two things and de-centralised control.
eecc 10y ago
Well, I've been touting a guild to break out of the horse trader circle where you're evaluated from the keyword search on your cv, the alternative being worse: codility. What's wrong in having a professional guild that makes you more than an FTE?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jessaustin 10y ago
Things like the lawyers' bar are complete bullshit as a concept in themselves. Since at this point the marginal benefit to the populace for each additional lawyer is negative, I'm glad the Bar has done even the little it has to limit the number of lawyers. I certainly wouldn't want to see an even less regulated market in lawyer service... eventually when most coders are coding pay2win games we'll have some regulations imposed from outside.

lacampbell 10y ago

in the software world, the gurus have refused to build an association/certification system of meaning, citing libertarian ideas against it. Associations and certifications don't necessarily have to involve the government. Various professions in various countries have non-government certifications that are well regarded (one such example would be a Bachelors Degree). Unless you are making the arguing that libertarians are opposed to certification in general, whether the state is involved or not. In which case you've completely lost me.

pnathan 10y ago
- I'm being slightly loose with my terminology: the general libertarian notion (as expressed by a sibling comment) that "the Man Isn't Supposed To Control Us, Ever, At All" is what I'm meaning. - A Bachelor's degree is well regarded, but it is not sufficient to demonstrate competence. A working certification system demonstrates competence on the part of the certification-holder. The problem with having no government involved in these things is that inevitably someone is going to ask a software engineer to do something that's "Legal But Unethical", and the question at hand winds up being: can the person be fired for this(remember, this is the engineer's career and livelihood)? And here we find the Law being involved. Or we find that building really bad software impacts people's quality of life in measurable ways, but the market won't improve the software. Infrastructurally, this requires a coordinated effort. This specifically is why unions and the law's intruding are so entangled: companies can be extraordinarily abusive to their employees; they can also be abusive to their customers (monopolies are distrusted for this very reason). And the proper recourses here involve significant fines and/or jail time - meaningful mechanisms of discouraging misbehavior.
barry-cotter 10y ago
> Various professions in various countries have non-government certifications that are well regarded (one such example would be a Bachelors Degree). Degrees are an absolutely awful example of a non-government certification. They're given out by institutions that are almost universally state founded, run and regulated. The US probably has the most private universities as a proportion of universities of any nation and I doubt they break 30%.

nradov 10y ago

The IEEE attempted to fix this by writing the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) and building a certification program around it. But that effort seems to be mostly dead: the guide hasn't been updated since 2004 and few people have taken the certification exam. https://www.computer.org/web/swebok https://www.computer.org/web/swebok