I'm almost 100% opposed to a certification process that denies people the right to code if they don't hold certification X. But this post did get me thinking

I'm almost 100% opposed to a certification process that denies people the right to code if they don't hold certification X. But this post did get me thinking about a different kind of certification - one based on safety rather than talent. Society does have a reasonable interest in ensuring that applications that process sensitive personal data - like Social Security Numbers, Medical Information, Financial Information (bank account numbers) - meet a certain standard. And most people have no ability to evaluate the dangers of coding errors. Society doesn't have the right to demand protection from untalented programmers. If you try to pay as little $$$ as possible, your app may suck, it may never get built, the wrong app may get built, etc... If you pay top dollar, the same thing may happen. If you can't evaluate code, you can't evaluate programmers, so you're hosed - and maybe you shouldn't be in this game. If you decide to play it, buyer beware seems to work fine. But the general public, whose medical information or ssn is in a database somewhere, didn't decide to play this game - the game was played on them. So we'd say - you don't need any certification to code. But you do need certification to handle certain types of personal data. And if there's a major hack of an application, we (the public) get to know exactly whose "certified" signature was on that piece of paper.