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In the mechanical engineering field the path to getting a PE requires: #1) Getting an accredited engineering degree #2) Passing the Fundamentals of Engineering

In the mechanical engineering field the path to getting a PE requires: #1) Getting an accredited engineering degree #2) Passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam #3) Working as an engineer (typically under the supervision of a licensed Professional Engineer) for several years #4) Passing the Professional Engineer exam If you haven't done those things, you can't call yourself a Professional Engineer (capital letters). I don't see how that is circular. Are you saying the people that have jumped through those 4 steps are potentially incompetent? I can believe the argument that some non-PE's are better engineers than some PE's, but I don't believe the argument that the people that are PE's are incompetent. I've never met a PE that was a bad engineer.

tolmasky 12y ago
The issues discussed in the post are about pretty malicious acts, basically writing spyware and malware. I'm not sure how a Professional Engineer exam will really address this. We are mixing in a lot of unrelated things (tests, apprenticeship, etc) to guise what this actually is: a club where existing members are the gate keepers for new members. This is the circular part, it serves the purposes of the members, not the customers -- notice how the users and customers don't figure into any of the 4 steps you mentioned in licensure at all -- they aren't empowered, they are now "protected" by the very same set of people we determined needing wrangling in in the first place. Aside from the trivial chicken and egg problems (who decides the initial PEs? who decides the first exam?), we have the very real concern that the most connected current software engineers in government are precisely the ones that are probably currently breaking the code of ethics (writing malware for national security purposes). This highlights the issue with "self judgment" and makes me incredibly skeptical of the opinions of such a potential licensing committee. Software engineering is not mechanical engineering. There's very little known "for sure", and it doesn't compare to the kind of experience we have building a bridge (there are people who can make really good arguments that mutability is "unsafe" for customers, or that strcpy vs strncpy, or hell, C being used at all). This makes this area ripe for abuse, and to have licensure used to propel the interests of the licensees and not the customers (some more thoughts on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q71hrwUcu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q71hrwUcu0 ). I doubt a "financing license" would stop wall street behaving the way it does, given the existing ethics and how everyone in power there is also connected to the government. All this of course, in contrast to us working hard on making security and encryption accessible to our customers.

tolmasky 12y ago

The issues discussed in the post are about pretty malicious acts, basically writing spyware and malware. I'm not sure how a Professional Engineer exam will really address this. We are mixing in a lot of unrelated things (tests, apprenticeship, etc) to guise what this actually is: a club where existing members are the gate keepers for new members. This is the circular part, it serves the purposes of the members, not the customers -- notice how the users and customers don't figure into any of the 4 steps you mentioned in licensure at all -- they aren't empowered, they are now "protected" by the very same set of people we determined needing wrangling in in the first place. Aside from the trivial chicken and egg problems (who decides the initial PEs? who decides the first exam?), we have the very real concern that the most connected current software engineers in government are precisely the ones that are probably currently breaking the code of ethics (writing malware for national security purposes). This highlights the issue with "self judgment" and makes me incredibly skeptical of the opinions of such a potential licensing committee. Software engineering is not mechanical engineering. There's very little known "for sure", and it doesn't compare to the kind of experience we have building a bridge (there are people who can make really good arguments that mutability is "unsafe" for customers, or that strcpy vs strncpy, or hell, C being used at all). This makes this area ripe for abuse, and to have licensure used to propel the interests of the licensees and not the customers (some more thoughts on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q71hrwUcu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q71hrwUcu0 ). I doubt a "financing license" would stop wall street behaving the way it does, given the existing ethics and how everyone in power there is also connected to the government. All this of course, in contrast to us working hard on making security and encryption accessible to our customers.