🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jul22.140553.24030@news.nd.edu> wessels@thor.cc.nd.edu (Andy Wessels) writes:
>In article <59257@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, duzan@cis.udel.edu (gdtltr@limbo.org (The Befuddled One)) writes:

>> The main problem is that of who gives out the licenses. We would
>> need someone to insure that those who give out the licenses are
>> qualified to do so, i.e. a license to give out licenses. Thus we
>> have a recurrence relation.  Where do we terminate the relation?

With politicians, of course.  Politicians are licensed to do anything
:-)

>Engineering is moving towards requiring practicing engineers to be
>registered witht the state(s) that they practice in (though not
>required today) It would be analagous (sp?) to the bar exam for
>lawyers or the boards for doctors.  This is a way for the state to
>help assure that the people practicing are competent and not outside
>of there realm of competency.  This type of exam is a _professional_
>certification.  Programmers are a _professional_ group of people.

Which programmers are you talking about?  Some are `professional'.
They do valuable work (i.e. someone values it enough to pay them) but
these people are not going to write the next VisiCalc or Emacs.

Other programmers are less `professional'.  They dress and behave less
conservatively.  They are less concerned with coding standards and
documentation standards than with getting something interesting
working.

The world needs both types of programmer, of course.

How do you tell if someone is of `professional standard'?  The horror
stories you cite below are bad, but it seems reasonable that the
people who employed the bad programmers would have tried to ensure
that they were competent, and they had an interest in the result.  Do
you really think that the government could do any better?

As others have already asked, how do you test if a programmer has the
professional standard nature?  Knowledge of techniques taught at
University?  (in other words a CS degree)  Knowledge of government
rules on how software should be written?  Whether the programmer has
written anything large and made it work before?  Most CS degrees
include a student project, so this would not seem sufficient.

As Larry Wall has said, the most important qualities in a great
computer programmer are hubris, chutzpa and laziness.  Maybe we should
test for these?  :-)

>There is software that is very difficult and has the potential effect
>of taking several lives.  Mentioned has been medical software and
>software that is life-critical.  What about cars?  The wrongly
>programmed software can have detrimental effects, and the amount of
>hardware and software is not going down.  What about industrial
>situations?  I have heard horror stories about an industrial
>controller that went haywire because the 'professional' was not able
>to correctly write interrupt driven software; compound that problem
>by writing it in assembly. As a final example, consider aviation
>electronics.  Very simply put, if it fails, you die.  If there were
>an error in the software of the primary computer, so would it be in
>the backups.

If software (or anything else) is safety-critical then the need for
official standards is there.  I no great problems with the idea that
the government regulate the production of s-c software in some way,
although I think that licensing programmers is a bad way to do it.
The requirements should be on the coding, tools and techniques
instead.  See UK MOD DefStan 00-55 for an example.

The other 95% of the software industry should be able to get on with
its buisness unhindered by More Goverment.

>[....] The idea that NJ wants
>to convey is some sort of _professional_ standards, based solely upon
>what I have read in this newsgroup.  There intentions are to promote
>solid software, and not screwed up hack jobs written by fly-by-night
>operations.

To what extent are "screwed up hack jobs" a problem and to what extent
would licensing solve it?

>Consider that Disk-Jockeys working at stations over 100
>watts _must_ be liscenced by the FCC.  As the transmitter power goes
>up, so do the requiremnents.  And the DJ may not have anything to do
>with the station outside of his little room.

Is this a Good Thing?  What is the government trying to stop here?
Has it succeeded?  Whose idea was it anyway?  Does this apply only to
DJs, or do newsreaders, anchormen and quiz show hosts need licensing?

Paul.



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Paul Johnson |            Isn't modern education wonderful: one size fits all!
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