4 ms·

But then what, no one is allowed to own a compiler or interpreter until they get a degree?

gregwtmtno 10y ago
I think that would be one of the major issues. Here's how that situation is handled on the legal side in the US. Anyone is permitted to practice law for themselves, but to practice law on someone's behalf, you need to be admitted to the bar. I'm not endorsing it, but I can imagine a situation where anyone can write code on their own, but to get paid to do it, you need a license (subject to ethics rules). Again, I'm not supporting the idea, but it could work that way.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  >Here's how that situation is handled on the legal side in the US. Anyone is permitted to practice law for themselves, but to practice law on someone's behalf, you need to be admitted to the bar. Important caveat: companies must be represented by a licensed attorney. A non-attorney startup founder cannot represent his/her own company in court. This is technically legally compliant with "someone else" since the corporation is a distinct legal entity, but it means that if you can't afford a lawyer (and which of us working slobs can these days?) and someone sues your company you are SOL. Courts are seeing a massive rise in pro se litigants over the last 15 years, entirely because legal services are stretching to costs that put them outside the reach of non-millionaires. Law is a great example of the nightmare that software can become if we go overboard on regulation. There was once a time where becoming a self-taught lawyer was not all that different than becoming a self-taught programmer. You could learn just by "reading the law" and shadowing professionals, much like you can learn just by reading (and writing) code today. It was at least partially merit based and some of the best legal minds of the last generation came up this way. Now, you have to sacrifice 6 years of your life and easily half a million dollars to be allowed to even try to sell legal services, and the market is so flooded with low-end graduates who are stuck in this desperate situation that many of them can't even sell their services anyway, due to the extreme competition in the lower rungs (driven by student desperation to find work to pay down that massive debt and the artificially constrained supply by the ABA's excessive licensing requirements).
- Sunset 10y ago
  This is the worst possible idea ever. Get government out of our lives!
hackermailman 10y ago
More likely a license, granted by some developer's guild (or worse, a government body) that allows you legal access to SWE tools and the ability to be a paid developer. Lose your license and the few proprietary tools around can reject your code signature or the guild can sue you. This sounds like fiction when RMS proposed this dystopia in the 90s but consider a future where complexity is so large only a handful of tools exist that can manipulate said complexity, or medical programming where access to 'bio IDEs' is licensed like dentists/nurses are because of insurance requirements.
- dsacco 10y ago
  That sounds horrific.
kec 10y ago
no, you just wouldn't be able to practice professionally until licensed, the same way medicine, law and "real" engineering work.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  That's a stupid attempt at solving this though. It would drive every capable but un-licensed programmer right in the arms of organized crime who would be more than happy to employ them.
  - dpark 10y ago
    Just like all the unlicensed doctors? I don't think it's a good idea to require licensing for most software engineers, but I think this specific concern is not actually a significant issue.
    - crystalmeph 10y ago
      I think it could be a significant issue. 1) Quite simply, software is much easier to learn than medicine, so you have a larger supply of capable software engineers than doctors. If the market for their services is being artificially suppressed, they will gravitate to wherever their services can make money. 2) There is a black market for medical services. Ever heard of a back-alley abortion?
      - dpark 10y ago
        > Quite simply, software is much easier to learn than medicine, so you have a larger supply of capable software engineers than doctors. If the market for their services is being artificially suppressed, they will gravitate to wherever their services can make money. The black market for exploits is already very lucrative. Devs willing to take that money are probably doing so already. > There is a black market for medical services. Ever heard of a back-alley abortion? Back alley abortions exist mostly because of restrictions on legal abortions, not because doctors aren't allowed to practice without license.
- 10y ago
derekp7 10y ago
I don't know, currently they don't make pencils and paper illegal to own unless you have an engineering or architecture degree. And you can even legally use those tools to draw buildings and work out math formulas. You just can't represent the final work as an engineer in specific contexts. The software equivalent would be that you can't sign off on code for a safety critical system without proper credentials. Now that doesn't mean you can't write such code, just like the guy swinging the hammer and striking a nail doesn't need to be an engineer.
s73ver 10y ago
I'd see it more like the Writer's Guild, Director's Guild, or Screen Actor's Guild. They don't stop you from entering the field, or from doing smaller work, but once you start doing professional work, you would need to join the guild. (I don't know where that line would be drawn, and right now, it's not important to me.) The existence of such guilds does not mean that non-members can't buy paper, director's chairs, or cameras.
- copperx 10y ago
  That reminds me of the HTML Writer's Guild, which used to be a thing in the 90's: http://hwg.org http://hwg.org

I think that would be one of the major issues. Here's how that situation is handled on the legal side in the US. Anyone is permitted to practice law for themselves, but to practice law on someone's behalf, you need to be admitted to the bar. I'm not endorsing it, but I can imagine a situation where anyone can write code on their own, but to get paid to do it, you need a license (subject to ethics rules). Again, I'm not supporting the idea, but it could work that way.

cookiecaper 10y ago
>Here's how that situation is handled on the legal side in the US. Anyone is permitted to practice law for themselves, but to practice law on someone's behalf, you need to be admitted to the bar. Important caveat: companies must be represented by a licensed attorney. A non-attorney startup founder cannot represent his/her own company in court. This is technically legally compliant with "someone else" since the corporation is a distinct legal entity, but it means that if you can't afford a lawyer (and which of us working slobs can these days?) and someone sues your company you are SOL. Courts are seeing a massive rise in pro se litigants over the last 15 years, entirely because legal services are stretching to costs that put them outside the reach of non-millionaires. Law is a great example of the nightmare that software can become if we go overboard on regulation. There was once a time where becoming a self-taught lawyer was not all that different than becoming a self-taught programmer. You could learn just by "reading the law" and shadowing professionals, much like you can learn just by reading (and writing) code today. It was at least partially merit based and some of the best legal minds of the last generation came up this way. Now, you have to sacrifice 6 years of your life and easily half a million dollars to be allowed to even try to sell legal services, and the market is so flooded with low-end graduates who are stuck in this desperate situation that many of them can't even sell their services anyway, due to the extreme competition in the lower rungs (driven by student desperation to find work to pay down that massive debt and the artificially constrained supply by the ABA's excessive licensing requirements).
Sunset 10y ago
This is the worst possible idea ever. Get government out of our lives!

hackermailman 10y ago

More likely a license, granted by some developer's guild (or worse, a government body) that allows you legal access to SWE tools and the ability to be a paid developer. Lose your license and the few proprietary tools around can reject your code signature or the guild can sue you. This sounds like fiction when RMS proposed this dystopia in the 90s but consider a future where complexity is so large only a handful of tools exist that can manipulate said complexity, or medical programming where access to 'bio IDEs' is licensed like dentists/nurses are because of insurance requirements.

dsacco 10y ago
That sounds horrific.

kec 10y ago

no, you just wouldn't be able to practice professionally until licensed, the same way medicine, law and "real" engineering work.

jacquesm 10y ago
That's a stupid attempt at solving this though. It would drive every capable but un-licensed programmer right in the arms of organized crime who would be more than happy to employ them.
- dpark 10y ago
  Just like all the unlicensed doctors? I don't think it's a good idea to require licensing for most software engineers, but I think this specific concern is not actually a significant issue.
  - crystalmeph 10y ago
    I think it could be a significant issue. 1) Quite simply, software is much easier to learn than medicine, so you have a larger supply of capable software engineers than doctors. If the market for their services is being artificially suppressed, they will gravitate to wherever their services can make money. 2) There is a black market for medical services. Ever heard of a back-alley abortion?
    - dpark 10y ago
      > Quite simply, software is much easier to learn than medicine, so you have a larger supply of capable software engineers than doctors. If the market for their services is being artificially suppressed, they will gravitate to wherever their services can make money. The black market for exploits is already very lucrative. Devs willing to take that money are probably doing so already. > There is a black market for medical services. Ever heard of a back-alley abortion? Back alley abortions exist mostly because of restrictions on legal abortions, not because doctors aren't allowed to practice without license.
10y ago

derekp7 10y ago

I don't know, currently they don't make pencils and paper illegal to own unless you have an engineering or architecture degree. And you can even legally use those tools to draw buildings and work out math formulas. You just can't represent the final work as an engineer in specific contexts. The software equivalent would be that you can't sign off on code for a safety critical system without proper credentials. Now that doesn't mean you can't write such code, just like the guy swinging the hammer and striking a nail doesn't need to be an engineer.

s73ver 10y ago

I'd see it more like the Writer's Guild, Director's Guild, or Screen Actor's Guild. They don't stop you from entering the field, or from doing smaller work, but once you start doing professional work, you would need to join the guild. (I don't know where that line would be drawn, and right now, it's not important to me.) The existence of such guilds does not mean that non-members can't buy paper, director's chairs, or cameras.

copperx 10y ago
That reminds me of the HTML Writer's Guild, which used to be a thing in the 90's: http://hwg.org http://hwg.org