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There isn’t a legal requirement to have gone to programming school before one can practice software development. (And a good thing too!) If someone wants to hi

by drdeca 7y ago

There isn’t a legal requirement to have gone to programming school before one can practice software development. (And a good thing too!) If someone wants to hire someone who can kinda program a little, because they charge less, and are likely able to accomplish the task the person has in mind, then they should be free to do that. (Of course, if the task is one where failure causes a big problem, then one should get someone more qualified.)

mrtksn 7y ago
That’s only because of the size if the impact if things go wrong. You need a license too to build a house or drive a truck because it’s actually very easy to do it %99 of the time well but you can’t afford that %1. Low affordance causes spilled blood, blood causes regulations.
- ggreer 7y ago
  I would argue that bus drivers have a much larger impact in terms of lives lost if things go wrong, yet they have significantly lower wages and require less training. The same goes for pilots and air traffic controllers.
  - mrtksn 7y ago
    You can argue that but what’s your point? The current truck driver training system works well enough AFAIK. Do you demand more training?
    - HPsquared 7y ago
      How is it decided how many regulations are "enough" for a given field? It seems they are on an ever-increasing ratchet mechanism, often driven by mass hysteria.
onei 7y ago
> There isn’t a legal requirement to have gone to programming school before one can practice software development. (And a good thing too!) The vast majority of developers cannot kill you if they screw up. In the cases where that isn't true, e.g. software for medical equipment, I'd expect to find some significantly higher hurdles to get past before you can release that software. We don't generally require developers to have certain qualifications, but their output can be measured in other standardised ways nonetheless.
- etripe 7y ago
  > their output can be measured in other standardised ways nonetheless. What are these standardised ways to measure developer output? I've never seen any, beyond "burndown charts" and "LOC", which I don't believe pass the sniff test.
  - onei 7y ago
    One example of a standard software might comply with is MISRA C [1]. For that, you ignore a large chunk of the C language to something much less prone to bugs. Others might be HIPAA compliance, how you handle personal information to be compliant with GDPR or the VW diesel emissions scandal a few years ago. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C
- HPsquared 7y ago
  Lots of professions can kill people of they screw up. LOTS. Our society has various ways to deal with this.
truculent 7y ago
> There isn’t a legal requirement to have gone to programming school before one can practice software development. It is if you are developing software in some high risk settings!

by drdeca 7y ago

mrtksn 7y ago

That’s only because of the size if the impact if things go wrong. You need a license too to build a house or drive a truck because it’s actually very easy to do it %99 of the time well but you can’t afford that %1. Low affordance causes spilled blood, blood causes regulations.

ggreer 7y ago
I would argue that bus drivers have a much larger impact in terms of lives lost if things go wrong, yet they have significantly lower wages and require less training. The same goes for pilots and air traffic controllers.
- mrtksn 7y ago
  You can argue that but what’s your point? The current truck driver training system works well enough AFAIK. Do you demand more training?
  - HPsquared 7y ago
    How is it decided how many regulations are "enough" for a given field? It seems they are on an ever-increasing ratchet mechanism, often driven by mass hysteria.

onei 7y ago

> There isn’t a legal requirement to have gone to programming school before one can practice software development. (And a good thing too!) The vast majority of developers cannot kill you if they screw up. In the cases where that isn't true, e.g. software for medical equipment, I'd expect to find some significantly higher hurdles to get past before you can release that software. We don't generally require developers to have certain qualifications, but their output can be measured in other standardised ways nonetheless.

etripe 7y ago
> their output can be measured in other standardised ways nonetheless. What are these standardised ways to measure developer output? I've never seen any, beyond "burndown charts" and "LOC", which I don't believe pass the sniff test.
- onei 7y ago
  One example of a standard software might comply with is MISRA C [1]. For that, you ignore a large chunk of the C language to something much less prone to bugs. Others might be HIPAA compliance, how you handle personal information to be compliant with GDPR or the VW diesel emissions scandal a few years ago. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MISRA_C
HPsquared 7y ago
Lots of professions can kill people of they screw up. LOTS. Our society has various ways to deal with this.

truculent 7y ago

> There isn’t a legal requirement to have gone to programming school before one can practice software development. It is if you are developing software in some high risk settings!