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Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
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Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#21) I'd move to a country which I wanted to be forced to import all its software
2) I'd propose a tiered system of software development licenses, involving passing tests such as "sort this linked list". Preferably do them on a whiteboard, just like in the real world.
3) I'd forbid access to a compiler to anyone without their software development licenses.
Or maybe I'd just go with an amorphous mess of university degrees, short courses and on-the-job experience.
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#3Here is the Tunisian approach:
1- Let private and public schools be. They can issue their engineering diploma as they like (to a certain extent).
2- Have a national committee that evaluates graduates and gives "national diploma of engineering" based on a number of criteria.
3- Watch the committee slowly become irrelevant as the private sector companies don't care about the national diploma and just wants qualified people.
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#4First of all, determine what value you bring with the certificates to various parties. In certified fields such as law, accounting, medicine, service providers benefit from high barrier of entry to market and high quality of the profession, whereas customers benefit from consistent quality and check & balances by law (via revocation of licenses if found to do malpractice). Governments benefit from increased surveillance and ability to regulate practices.
In software development, these and other benefits are not as critical or very hard to achieve even with strong enforcement.
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#5Here is the Tunisian approach: 1- Let private and public schools be. They can issue their engineering diploma as they like (to a certain extent). 2- Have a national committee that evaluates graduates and gives "national diploma of engineering" based on a number of criteria. 3- Watch the committee slowly become irrelevant as the private sector companies don't care about the national diploma and just wants qualified pe…
you'd need laws to disallow non-certified from working. but a lot of people won't like it, and so any non-law enforced committee won't ever be relevant.
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#6Here is the Tunisian approach: 1- Let private and public schools be. They can issue their engineering diploma as they like (to a certain extent). 2- Have a national committee that evaluates graduates and gives "national diploma of engineering" based on a number of criteria. 3- Watch the committee slowly become irrelevant as the private sector companies don't care about the national diploma and just wants qualified pe…
you'd need laws to disallow non-certified from working. but a lot of people won't like it, and so any non-law enforced committee won't ever be relevant.
If you're not certified you can't work as an engineer for the state.
But the state can't afford to piss-off the private sector, otherwise unemployment rates will go through the roof.
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#7Why would you want to do that?
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#8As a Software Engineering student, I can't decipher whether the comments here are sarcastic or honest.
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#9It's been done several times. For example:
https://m.ieee.org/education_careers/careers/certified_softw...
No one bothers or cares much. Just call yourself an "engineer" if you want to.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/progr...
Re: Ask HN: How would you set up national certification for software engineers?
#10Do what they do for all other engineering fields: require a certified engineer sign off on a product delivered to a regulated entity, and be able to hold that engineer criminally liable if someone comes to harm from the product they signed off on.
The quality of software for lolzcat apps could remain shitty, but the quality of firmware for FCC approval would go way up.
In order for quality to increase for infrastructure software, engineers need to risk going to prison. It worked for civil, chemical, mechanical, etc. engineers. A lot of people died on shitty bridges before they started locking shitty engineers up. Software engineering will be no different.