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In many countries, a professional is considered to be a banker, lawyer or a doctor. Programmers are not given the same respect. Now with the importance of tec
by yapcguy 13y ago
In many countries, a professional is considered to be a banker, lawyer or a doctor. Programmers are not given the same respect.
Now with the importance of technology in our day-to-day lives, there is a chance for programmers and those working in IT to be considered as professionals, as equals.
Instead we have people within the industry running around describing themselves as 'geeks' and 'nerds' and 'hackers'. Meanwhile those outside the industry claim that programming is easy, anyone can do it, all you need is a computer and a couple of lessons.
You would not find people saying the same thing about doctors or lawyers, and you would not find doctors or lawyers denigrating themselves.
- Yhippa 13y agoThis is really starting to sound like the dotcom era where anybody who wrote a line of HTML could say that they were a software developer.
- yapcguy 13y agoIt's worse. Apparently you can take a random homeless person, give them a few lessons, and hey presto you have an app maker.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoWell, 99% of apps don't do anything useful - they're either for killing time or an invention of marketing department hell-bent on selling you more of the stuff you don't need. So I'm not surprised that it's not difficult to build something that can compete in this market.
- amasad 13y agoI'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make but I've always felt like a professional, maybe because I mostly worked at tech companies. And anyone going around calling themselves "geek", "nerd", or "hacker", probably aren't one.
- yapcguy 13y agoSee post by wes-exp above.
- efuquen 13y agoBeing a doctor and practicing laws have much higher barriers to entry for purely practical reasons, not because of some goal of these professionals form "denigrating" themselves. They are not as nearly as accessible as programming and carry much higher consequences for incompetence (which also clearly still happens quite often regardless). Stop being such an elitist. Just like any profession there are worlds of difference between the different levels of skill and competence, that doesn't mean you're denigrating yourself by trying to make it more accessible for kids.
- wes-exp 13y agoIt is entirely reasonable to demand some professionalism and set some standards in fields besides medicine and law. Already, many engineering disciplines are regulated and require a license to practice. As computers become more and more woven into society, the consequences of having incompetent programmers are becoming more and more severe. Just one example currently in the news is the Target breach. Millions of people are affected by that. Or healthcare.gov, anyone? Now just imagine when cars drive themselves, computers control your money (bitcoin), and "apps" supervise your grandparents' health. The idea that all of this critical technical infrastructure is built out by Pepsi-fueled kids who reject education, experience, and scientific rigor in favor of whatever circle-jerk beliefs they invent amongst themselves as they "hack" on PHP, is frankly appalling. Such teams are the go-to choice for clueless corporate PHBs who only see dollars per hour as the hiring criteria. But hey, that's the status quo, and I doubt you'll ever see companies move to be in favor of setting some professional standards, because the business priority is cheaper workers.
- yapcguy 13y agoGreat post.