4 ms·

"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]

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]