🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <46549@netnews.upenn.edu> yee@mipgsun.mipg.upenn.edu (Conway Yee) writes:

>Ok, I'll bite.  What's the problem?  Licensing merely mandates a minimum
>level of competency.  Many other professions have licensing procedures
>for exactly that reason.  Would you prefer to be treated by a doctor who
>did not have a license to practice medicine?

 This is a very common misconception.  But it does not stand scrutiny very
well.  An accountant is required to establish competency in order to hang
out his shingle and make himself available to Joe Public as a CPA.  But
financial firms can hire accountants regardless of whether they have
certification or not.  A physician requires a license to hang out his
shingle for the public practice of medicine.  But hospitals (not to mention
the military) routinely hire physicians who are not licensed.  The accounting
firms and the hospitals are presumed to have sufficient expertise to
adequately supervise.  It is only the individual member of the public who
has not means of judgement who need protection.

 To do the same with programming would be reasonable.  Namely, licensing should
be required for anyone who hangs up his shingle for the unsuspecting public to
come in for programming.  But why bother.  A programmer who does that is
going to go broke anyway, since there is very little business of that form.

 Most proposed programmer licensing laws really amount to attempts at
controlling the market place by introducing government sponsored
restraint of trade.  The effect will be devastating except for a few
broker firms who will stand to gain by their control of the market.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940