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IMHO, chasing a "real profession" in software is an illusion to begin with but I suppose some mental models about a career can be useful. Comparing to the law
by danesparza 6y ago
IMHO, chasing a "real profession" in software is an illusion to begin with but I suppose some mental models about a career can be useful.
Comparing to the law or medical careers is a farce. The law doesn't change quickly, and medicine hardly changes at all from year to year. Our mental models of civilization don't really change much from year to year. And the human body doesn't visibly evolve even from decade to decade. Of course it's easier to have a meaningful certification in those fields.
Software still changes incredibly quickly. Not as quickly as in the 1990's -- but not slowly enough to warrant blanket certification bureaucracy that will just have to change in 5-10 years.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago> Software still changes incredibly quickly. Not as quickly as in the 1990's -- but not slowly enough to warrant blanket certification bureaucracy that will just have to change in 5-10 years. Software changes, fundamentals do not. The people who complain about credentialism are the same people whose answer to "my code is slow" is "just add more hardware". We've built abstraction layers to make software easier to write to reduce the human cost but in term end up with less qualified people.
- michaelt 6y ago> Software changes, fundamentals do not. The Big-O complexity of mergesort hasn't changed since the 1990s, certainly. But our industry's answer to "what does a properly designed website login system look like?" has changed a great deal since the 1990s.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoRight, but on the flip side, how many companies do you think should have publicly exposed Elasticsearch clusters before we think of having certified for security.