🚀 go-pugleaf

In his article Brian Marick <marick@m.cs.uiuc.edu> writes:

>Actually, there is a way in which licensing does have an effect.  In
>medicine (veterinary medicine at least), to keep your license, you are
>required to get a certain amount of continuing education per year.
>That's important in a fast-changing field (which both medicine and
>software are).  Certainly this requirement can be abused (sometimes
>continuing education credits are given for little more than class
>reunions), but veterinarians don't stagnate as fast as programmers.

	For those who have access to the ICCP certification requirements,
note that recertification can be handled either by passing the tests again or
by appropriate continuing education units.

	For those who don't know yet, ICCP is (what I'd describe as) a
prototype licensing and certification organization for computer industry.
The ACM, IEEE-CS, and several other professional organizations formed and
guide the ICCP;  so far as I've been able to see, it's been developed along
the same lines as the licensing process of the "established engineering
professions" such as architecture and mechanical engineering.

	The wording of the New Jersey bill does seem a little loose.
I'd love to hear reactions from anyone who can compare it with corresponding
licensure legislation for other licensed professions.

		Joseph Beckenbach
		Member of Technical Staff

Test programs, not programmers -- license software ENGINEERS!

PS  The NJ legislation would reserve the title "Software Engineer" to
	those licensed as such, in the same manner as for all established
	engineering disciplines with licensing requirements.  This can
	be seen as a move towards consistency of name use....
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Joseph Beckenbach	jerbil@ultra.com	408-922-0100 x246