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The tech industry brought this on themselves. They acted like the Wild West, and now the pendulum swings the other way. Because the legislators are uneducated a

The tech industry brought this on themselves. They acted like the Wild West, and now the pendulum swings the other way. Because the legislators are uneducated about technology and only read bad things in the press. Software engineers are professionals and they should have ethics exams, a board, and licenses like other professions. Since companies don’t have any incentive to do it by themselves, a board for software engineers will help. The board will be able to represent all software engineers at the legislature level and not act as lobbyist for one particular company. But for now, we reap what we sow.

Ceph62 8y ago
The only path this leads is tech company's will be controlled and forced to become more than they already now virtual "depuities" for the state to enforce censorship and content controls. This is not the right direction. It will require even greater instruments of surveillance and reduction is privacy as systems need be built to study each user and all content they post. Freedom on the internet needs to be defended at all costs. These politicians exacerbate divisions between classes, religions, political idealogies and ethnicities for political purpose and when things inevitably go wrong and someone walks into a church with an AR and starts killing people the solution they propose is more control of speech, increased natsec laws etc etc?? Really?? Dark DARK days are ahead if people do not wake the f*#$ up!
ajdlinux 8y ago
I'm unconvinced that software development should have the same level of licensing as e.g. engineering. Software isn't the same as traditional mechanical/structural/electrical etc engineering - it's a faster-moving area, and most of the time software is not safety-critical and has only limited societal impact in case of failure. It's also a lot easier for newcomers to get started in, and I don't want that to change. But I definitely think there's some role for professional bodies, with ethical codes, certifications, PD and all that, which programmers have traditionally resisted. Unfortunately, the existing professional bodies are not that. The Australian Computer Society, to give one example, is more representative of corporate IT executives than of programmers, and I don't know anyone who is a member apart from those whose employers pay for it.
- logicchains 8y ago
  I have some friends who studied the Masters of Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne (an Australian university), a course accredited by EUR-Inf (http://www.eqanie.eu/pages/quality-label.php http://www.eqanie.eu/pages/quality-label.php) and the Washington Accord (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Accord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Accord), which allows graduates to more legitimately refer to themselves as "engineers" in some countries. A huge portion of the course was dedicated to essentially just teaching waterfall: giant UML diagrams (with mandatory 90s style OO) and 50-100 page reports. Given how disconnected this is from what's considered modern software development best practices, I think in practice the spread of licensing would only hold the field back (unless it's somehow completely disconnected from the bodies responsible for traditional engineering licensing).
  - ajdlinux 8y ago
    Yep, this is exactly my problem - I want higher standards across the industry, but I want it to be about substance, not merely additional process and bureaucracy, and I want training to not be so disconnected from real world practice.
    - arvinsim 8y ago
      Same sentiment here. But technology moves too fast for any licensing body to keep up.
  - iscrewyou 8y ago
    A license isn't only about technical knowledge. It also tests you on ethical issues, historical issues, complaints, and record lookups.
    - logicchains 8y ago
      How much would such a licensing system have to increase software engineers' ethics to compensate for decreasing software engineers' software development competence?
ionised 8y ago
> Software engineers are professionals and they should have ethics exams, a board, and licenses like other professions. We never will be a true profession until we have those things. Calling ourselves professionals now, or pretending like we are comparable in credibility to something like a civil engineer or an architect is just jerking each other off.

Ceph62 8y ago

The only path this leads is tech company's will be controlled and forced to become more than they already now virtual "depuities" for the state to enforce censorship and content controls. This is not the right direction. It will require even greater instruments of surveillance and reduction is privacy as systems need be built to study each user and all content they post. Freedom on the internet needs to be defended at all costs. These politicians exacerbate divisions between classes, religions, political idealogies and ethnicities for political purpose and when things inevitably go wrong and someone walks into a church with an AR and starts killing people the solution they propose is more control of speech, increased natsec laws etc etc?? Really?? Dark DARK days are ahead if people do not wake the f*#$ up!

ajdlinux 8y ago

I'm unconvinced that software development should have the same level of licensing as e.g. engineering. Software isn't the same as traditional mechanical/structural/electrical etc engineering - it's a faster-moving area, and most of the time software is not safety-critical and has only limited societal impact in case of failure. It's also a lot easier for newcomers to get started in, and I don't want that to change. But I definitely think there's some role for professional bodies, with ethical codes, certifications, PD and all that, which programmers have traditionally resisted. Unfortunately, the existing professional bodies are not that. The Australian Computer Society, to give one example, is more representative of corporate IT executives than of programmers, and I don't know anyone who is a member apart from those whose employers pay for it.

logicchains 8y ago
I have some friends who studied the Masters of Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne (an Australian university), a course accredited by EUR-Inf (http://www.eqanie.eu/pages/quality-label.php http://www.eqanie.eu/pages/quality-label.php) and the Washington Accord (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Accord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Accord), which allows graduates to more legitimately refer to themselves as "engineers" in some countries. A huge portion of the course was dedicated to essentially just teaching waterfall: giant UML diagrams (with mandatory 90s style OO) and 50-100 page reports. Given how disconnected this is from what's considered modern software development best practices, I think in practice the spread of licensing would only hold the field back (unless it's somehow completely disconnected from the bodies responsible for traditional engineering licensing).
- ajdlinux 8y ago
  Yep, this is exactly my problem - I want higher standards across the industry, but I want it to be about substance, not merely additional process and bureaucracy, and I want training to not be so disconnected from real world practice.
  - arvinsim 8y ago
    Same sentiment here. But technology moves too fast for any licensing body to keep up.
- iscrewyou 8y ago
  A license isn't only about technical knowledge. It also tests you on ethical issues, historical issues, complaints, and record lookups.
  - logicchains 8y ago
    How much would such a licensing system have to increase software engineers' ethics to compensate for decreasing software engineers' software development competence?

ionised 8y ago

> Software engineers are professionals and they should have ethics exams, a board, and licenses like other professions. We never will be a true profession until we have those things. Calling ourselves professionals now, or pretending like we are comparable in credibility to something like a civil engineer or an architect is just jerking each other off.