There's an incentive for lawyers, doctors, and accountants. You get a license to work from a board of peers, there's peer review, you can lose the confidence of

There's an incentive for lawyers, doctors, and accountants. You get a license to work from a board of peers, there's peer review, you can lose the confidence of that board and have the license to work revoked. I don't know the histories of those professions, and what's in common other than "obligations that go beyond self-interest". But I think lawyers are substantially different from other professions, even setting aside the state bar: they are officers of the court. They're an integral part of the legal system and they have a superseding duty to that system's function, not only to a client. So how would software developers/programmers/etc create something equivalent to that? Seems to me some critical mass of that industry would need to lobby state and/or federal government for the creation of a board who then produces a standard and certifies members conform to the standard under penalty that if they do not police their own members that the state can revoke the franchise/monopoly on that certification.