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Totally agreed. I regularly introduce myself as a doctor to new acquaintances, since I occasionally visit the pharmacy to fill some prescriptions. It totally pi

Totally agreed. I regularly introduce myself as a doctor to new acquaintances, since I occasionally visit the pharmacy to fill some prescriptions. It totally pisses me off when they insist on asking me what medical school I went to, and elitist crap like that!

klmadfejno 6y ago
"licensed medical professional" != "developer"
- mrweasel 6y ago
  What if you develop software for medical equipment? As developers we’re lucky enough to be able to find industries where our education/certications doesn’t matter. On the other hand, some niches which could use an actual licensed training program. You could in theory teach yourself enough about the medical field to know more than a doctor, still the doctor has a piece of paper saying that someone checked his or her qualifications. Even a CS degree doesn’t tell you anything about a persons abilities to write software.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    What if you develop software for medical equipment? Then you're a programmer, not a doctor. still the doctor has a piece of paper saying that some checked his or her qualifications Yes. That's how we keep the frauds and whackjobs from killing people. "Gatekeeping" is a dirty word on HN, but it also has its usefulness. We don't let just anyone drive a car, even if they really really really think they know how. You have to have a license.
    - commandlinefan 6y ago
      > "Gatekeeping" is a dirty word on HN, but it also has its usefulness Especially considering that its literal definition is "requiring people to actually understand how to program computers before hiring them for professional computer programming jobs".
      - fredsanford 6y ago
        > Especially considering that its literal definition is "requiring people to actually understand how to program computers Too bad no one ever told Microsoft about that...
  - adsjhdashkj 6y ago
    Yea i was going to ask how the license would differ from a CS degree. I assume you're thinking of more of an .. apprenticeship arrangement? Something to vet the authors capability? The problem here is "developing" is so loose and unique that it's difficult for me to even imagine a useful certification. Lets take easy examples - can someone make a store front to handle incoming transactions? Well firstly that tells me nothing of the scalability, security and mostly importantly maintainability of the software. It tells me nothing about the language of choice, assuming i care.. which you usually do if there's a team involved and you're trying to integrate a new employee. But even if we ignore those we still have the biggest issue that i see; software development tends to be unicorns, imo. Every project i've worked on is largely unique, and while there is overlap - eg all of it is APIs, the quality of the work (if i was to self judge) was solving the problems inside the "Web API CRUD". In a building analogy - i don't care that you can build a house to spec. I care that you can architect the floor plan, decide features yourself, future proof as best you can, etc. Perhaps there's some level of architect certification that matches this, no idea. But i care about peoples generic ability to problem solve, to find information and suss out real application. Their ability to build a house according to spec is of little to no interest to me.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Medical licensing came about precisely because there were too many quacks and incompetents claiming to be qualified doctors who were harming or killing patients.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
throwaway38235 6y ago
It has to do with the risk and impact of your work. Medical doctors, engineers, lawyers, researcher, teachers - they all do important things and need training, selection and accountability. Luckily, developers never have to write MCAS software for Boeing, so we can hang out on HN where you can be a Senior Engineer after a 6 months bootcamp and 2 years of stack overflow.
- oliwarner 6y ago
  Data safety isn't nothing though. Developers should have some appreciation for security vectors, laws around its collection, storage and processing, and knowing when (and how) to delete it. Accessibility. Deployment. What happens when it all goes wrong. Far from an exhaustive list but you can see what I mean. I don't think anybody is arguing about what people do for themselves, but advertising yourself as a developer when you might have no experience or training, misleads people. Gives the rest of us a bad name. This is real a problem for freelance developers. In the 15 years or so I've been doing it, I've heard at least 30 stories of how "the last guy" critically underdelivered, and there's basically an expectation I'm going to run off with their cash. I relieve them of this pretty rapidly but it's a very defensive process.
  - throwaway38235 6y ago
    You are really missing the point and my sarcasm here...
xboxnolifes 6y ago
It looks like this bit didn't show up in the parent comment for you: > a title which means so little in the first place

klmadfejno 6y ago

"licensed medical professional" != "developer"

mrweasel 6y ago
What if you develop software for medical equipment? As developers we’re lucky enough to be able to find industries where our education/certications doesn’t matter. On the other hand, some niches which could use an actual licensed training program. You could in theory teach yourself enough about the medical field to know more than a doctor, still the doctor has a piece of paper saying that someone checked his or her qualifications. Even a CS degree doesn’t tell you anything about a persons abilities to write software.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  What if you develop software for medical equipment? Then you're a programmer, not a doctor. still the doctor has a piece of paper saying that some checked his or her qualifications Yes. That's how we keep the frauds and whackjobs from killing people. "Gatekeeping" is a dirty word on HN, but it also has its usefulness. We don't let just anyone drive a car, even if they really really really think they know how. You have to have a license.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    > "Gatekeeping" is a dirty word on HN, but it also has its usefulness Especially considering that its literal definition is "requiring people to actually understand how to program computers before hiring them for professional computer programming jobs".
    - fredsanford 6y ago
      > Especially considering that its literal definition is "requiring people to actually understand how to program computers Too bad no one ever told Microsoft about that...
- adsjhdashkj 6y ago
  Yea i was going to ask how the license would differ from a CS degree. I assume you're thinking of more of an .. apprenticeship arrangement? Something to vet the authors capability? The problem here is "developing" is so loose and unique that it's difficult for me to even imagine a useful certification. Lets take easy examples - can someone make a store front to handle incoming transactions? Well firstly that tells me nothing of the scalability, security and mostly importantly maintainability of the software. It tells me nothing about the language of choice, assuming i care.. which you usually do if there's a team involved and you're trying to integrate a new employee. But even if we ignore those we still have the biggest issue that i see; software development tends to be unicorns, imo. Every project i've worked on is largely unique, and while there is overlap - eg all of it is APIs, the quality of the work (if i was to self judge) was solving the problems inside the "Web API CRUD". In a building analogy - i don't care that you can build a house to spec. I care that you can architect the floor plan, decide features yourself, future proof as best you can, etc. Perhaps there's some level of architect certification that matches this, no idea. But i care about peoples generic ability to problem solve, to find information and suss out real application. Their ability to build a house according to spec is of little to no interest to me.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Medical licensing came about precisely because there were too many quacks and incompetents claiming to be qualified doctors who were harming or killing patients.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

throwaway38235 6y ago

It has to do with the risk and impact of your work. Medical doctors, engineers, lawyers, researcher, teachers - they all do important things and need training, selection and accountability. Luckily, developers never have to write MCAS software for Boeing, so we can hang out on HN where you can be a Senior Engineer after a 6 months bootcamp and 2 years of stack overflow.

oliwarner 6y ago
Data safety isn't nothing though. Developers should have some appreciation for security vectors, laws around its collection, storage and processing, and knowing when (and how) to delete it. Accessibility. Deployment. What happens when it all goes wrong. Far from an exhaustive list but you can see what I mean. I don't think anybody is arguing about what people do for themselves, but advertising yourself as a developer when you might have no experience or training, misleads people. Gives the rest of us a bad name. This is real a problem for freelance developers. In the 15 years or so I've been doing it, I've heard at least 30 stories of how "the last guy" critically underdelivered, and there's basically an expectation I'm going to run off with their cash. I relieve them of this pretty rapidly but it's a very defensive process.
- throwaway38235 6y ago
  You are really missing the point and my sarcasm here...

xboxnolifes 6y ago

It looks like this bit didn't show up in the parent comment for you: > a title which means so little in the first place