Interesting idea but I think the arena of comp-sci is far more diverse than a traditional craftsman. I finished an engineering apprenticeship once and it said

Interesting idea but I think the arena of comp-sci is far more diverse than a traditional craftsman. I finished an engineering apprenticeship once and it said that I had reached a basic standard in engineering but that didn't mean I could work on anything after that. My skillset was very much railway traction and any deviation would have required significant training. Same with development. If you have done the same old crap for 20 years, that doesn't automatically put you on par with a genuine skilled senior dev (you might not even be good enough to be a junior). I do agree though that I think there should be trade qualifications for developers and although I would feel aggrevied about sitting exams for things I have done for 20 years, I couldn't argue that it would remove a lot of these screening exams and could be just "Required: Grade 5 .Net developer or something"