Earlier quoted context omitted.
Medical doctors have licenses which include exams and all sort of other barriers before they’re a ‘real’ independent doctor.
I'd be curious to hear peoples thoughts if they would subject themselves to this sort of professional board and licensing for software. There's clearly a pre-determined set of information and skills that are fundamental enough to be tested, but it is also fairly creative and subjective at the end of the day.
I would likely take issue with whatever criteria people chose for judging someone's software engineering ability. Creating the best performing system is rarely anyone's goal (not that performance should be discounted,) they want to make something with the hard to quantify qualities of robustness, scalability, maintainability and expandability, to different degrees. They also often want to use languages or frameworks (or supporting software like databases) based on what boils down to fashion. Often the most desirable quality for candidates is an ability to learn and leverage new tools, given varied and shifting standards of good design, which again is hard to quantify.