[FLUX-YOU]

>Why should we as software developers devalue our craft so much?

Frankly there's too much money being made at average skill levels that don't require any degree. I don't think there's an economic incentive to go for more regulation. Better yet, there's a ton of need and some of the work is just plain easy once you do have 1-2 years.

There's positions that don't directly affect life/liberty unlike law, medicine, engineering, and military. Making our industry like theirs would require legal regulation of titles and work.

Open source would then become a legal grey area (because OS stuff is used in software that affects life/liberty right now) unless you are willing to police open source and make sure all contributors are qualified. Or hold the companies responsible for only using open source that only has qualified contributors. Either way, it's a pretty massive blow to the whole idea of open source.

If you want this to happen organically, then that's just going to take time on the scale of generations. Law, medicine, engineering, and military have all had a ton of time to develop this versus software engineering. Right now we're just cavemen protecting and healing our villages with shell scripts and compilers.

[careersuicide]

Frankly I hope that that regulation never happens. It sounds like a dystopian nightmare to me. The biggest reason I became a programmer, besides the fact that I really enjoy programming, is that there was no one to tell me I couldn't become one. Growing up I wanted to be all sorts of things only to find out there were entrenched gatekeepers and a multitude of of barriers to each profession. For whatever reason jumping through other people's hoops (even if their existence is totally justifiable) had no appeal to me. I shudder to think of a world where kids like me grow up and find out that programming has just as many licensing requirements and regulations as everything else they might want to be. Had that been the case I probably would have ended up just working a boring retail job or something.

[ap22213]

But, on the other hand, companies are throwing away countless dollars on bad software. The problem is that it's relatively easy to write code to make something look somewhat functional, but it's a different level to complete it. The mistakes of the quick approaches take time to show, and then it becomes too late. It takes way more time and money to fix the issues, later.

This has been a debate that's been going on for decades. There's the camp that wants software to get to the rigor of other engineering domains. But, there are a lot more who don't. Personally, I think we should be cautious. Software is such a subjective and broad field that it would be harmful to emulate the methods of other engineering domains.

That said, I have seen a trend over the last decade of 'juniors' disregarding the wisdom and experience of 'seniors'. Maybe it's because we are too slow, too methodical, not well informed on what's new or recently hyped. Maybe we are more strict, more ambivalent (seeing everything as trade offs), or maybe we are just not fun. Who knows? But, it's incredibly frustrating to continuously fix poorly developed systems. It's irritating to give advice and guidance, only to have it disregarded because some celebrity consultant, blogger, or tweeter invented another silver bullet.

Contrary to what some may think, it's really not fun to be able to say, 'I told you so.'. It just means that we have another mess to clean up.

But, back to the topic at hand, when I hire a 'senior', I expect them to not require lots of guidance, make good decisions, not break anything, have a breadth of experience, be an awesome team players, be calm and tenacious, be able to pick up new things with ease, and have fundamental understanding of the whole stack, algorithms, and data structures.

[hackits]

Going to play the devil's advocate here in regards to 'juniors' disregarding the wisdom and experience of 'seniors'. Maybe the advice, experience you're giving is not backed up with any evidence? They may be taking a analytical and evidence based approach and simply choosing between you're advice or a celebrity tweeter as both lacking any evidence and thus being both equal. Possibly the silver bullet gives them a upper hand of using the latest marketing trends for reciter's to land their next job that pays 10K more?

I find it a bit of a juxtaposition that on one hand you're undecided about more engineering approaches and certification to building software. Then on the other hand you're frustrated that your advice or experience is not valued? To me it seems like you've answered your own question why your advice isn't valued by hip new guys.

[ap22213]

Honestly, it's difficult to back things with evidence in this field. Ever try to get someone to read a paper on software engineering methods? Before one can get them to understand the evidence or even look at the data, they've already whipped together another couple thousand lines of code to demonstrate the opposite.

Look, I'm definitely not a top %1 (or even %10) architect. But, I have had enough successes under my belt that it's statistically improbable that I don't know what I'm talking about. However, my experience is usually discounted because 'times change, and old ideas aren't relevant' as they say.

[hackits]

`Ever try to get someone to read a paper on software engineering methods?`

Yup, they never read it, let alone care.

`Look, I'm definitely not a top %1 (or even %10) architect`

I would say just simply knowing puts you in the top 10%. I don't wanted to come off as a jackass. Mostly because I've been through the same thing.

I make my bread and butter maintain large government software. Some of it good, some of it bad.

[serge2k]

> That said, I have seen a trend over the last decade of 'juniors' disregarding the wisdom and experience of 'seniors'. Maybe it's because we are too slow, too methodical, not well informed on what's new or recently hyped. Maybe we are more strict, more ambivalent (seeing everything as trade offs), or maybe we are just not fun. Who knows? But, it's incredibly frustrating to continuously fix poorly developed systems. It's irritating to give advice and guidance, only to have it disregarded because some celebrity consultant, blogger, or tweeter invented another silver bullet.

Maybe you're just getting older, and more aware/tired of it.

[ovatsug25]

Health care in the US blows through cash and often gets poorer results. Regulation does not a great industry make.

[ap22213]

I'm not a proponent of blind regulation, and actually, I prefer less regulation, generally. But, do you have evidence to back up your implicit claim that less regulation yields better results?

I ask that with complete curiosity and humility - my perception is of experts telling me for decades that awesomeness is attainable with more deregulation. And, when awesome doesn't come, they say that it's because we didn't deregulate enough. Then, they ask for more.

But, I truly want to know if my perceptions are off - i.e. changes could be happening slowly enough that I don't see the immediate results.

[nitrogen]

There are scenarios in game theory (which I have not studied myself, only read about indirectly) that regularly occur in the market, that can only be solved by regulation enforced by a non-participant. Many of those scenarios relate to externalized costs (e.g. pollution) and information asymmetries.

[nemo]

Health care in countries that have the best results are also heavily regulated. Regulations can be very beneficial, but only if they're well developed and well protected from regulatory capture.

[hackits]

Citation?

[nemo]

For what?

[hackits]

You don't know how governments works then.

[uola]

The alternative solution is what we have today when large tech companies prefer to hire people from high status schools.

[careersuicide]

Yeah, but part of my point, which I suppose I could have made more explicit, was that I don't have to work for a large tech company. Or any company at all. I can, if I really want to, strike out on my own and do it myself. That's how I got started getting paid to program. That path isn't for everyone, but I think that it's possible at all is a wonderful thing. I get a sinking feeling in my gut when I even contemplate a future where doing so just isn't a real option in the same way that one can't just become a doctor by obsessively practicing medicine on their own every night in their free time. I know I'm not the only one who got into programming that way and I think it would be really sad to close that avenue off for potential future programmers.

[uola]

I unfortunately think that the reason why programming has been accessible is because we didn't know better. The standard for what can be publicly accessible on the Internet or what will compete for users attention is much higher today. I think for programming to remain open there must be formal ways to acquire knowledge or knowing the quality of a piece of software.

[poikniok]

And under an accreditation system they would not? I find that very hard to believe.