[stale2002]

The unfortunate thing about what you are saying is that a CS bar exam, or certificate, wouldn't "prove" that you have any worthwhile skills.

CS degrees are math degrees. They don't address the needs of the millions of Web Dev jobs out there.

I am not a computer scientist. I am a web developer and proud.

And any web developer accreditation program needs to address the needs of web development and NOT address the needs of computer science.

[dismantlethesun]

Understanding the computer science underpinnings are fairly useful. For instance, what if you are unhappy with the rendering speed of React? Rather than faff about complaining about it, you can just pull out your textbook, re-read that chapter on graph algorithms and you too can implement your own virtual DOM that calculates the least set of changes to apply to the directed graph that is the browser DOM.

That's how we end up with projects like Preact, Inferno, etc.

Now does that mean you need to read the latest papers, and be a proper computer scientist? Nope. I find that reading papers from the 70s and 80s will take you pretty far. Just rip and reapply to new circumstances.

I am a web developer.

A lot of code that I write is 'good', but its hardly clever or original---it's a simple reapplication of old practiced done 100 times in desktop GUI applications, now applied to the web.

I found that a lot of old-school GUI developers never really crossed over to the web, so a lot of that knowledge has been lost to the community at large. You can still find it in text books though :)

[relics443]

I have a graduate degree in CS. I'm well versed in most aspects of the field. I pride myself on writing clean, efficient code, and architecting correctly. I also have a learning disability (dyscalculia) which makes certain things difficult (discrete math, calculus, etc...).

The fact that CS is based on mathematic principles does not make it a math degree (although that did make things challenging for me at times).

[type0]

> The fact that CS is based on mathematic principles does not make it a math degree (although that did make things challenging for me at times).

But in order for it to be a useful degree you need to have math as supporting subject. This is the same as if you want to be molecular biologist you need to know a few semesters worth of chemistry otherwise you'd be given endless hard time, which you seem to understand.

I studied math at uni but because I haven't studied enough it always is so much harder to grok all important things in programming and CS. I would argue that it is a huge roadblock for anyone wanting to become any good at CS, but then again there's programming and there's 'programming'.

[relics443]

"But in order for it to be a useful degree you need to have math as supporting subject."

My university allowed me to make a custom degree that did not include calculus and didn't take my discrete math grade into account. I'm not what you would call "well-versed" in anything math related. I understand the theory for a few things I've looked into but that's as far as it goes.

In all of my career (~10 years) I've never once found myself at a disadvantage because of it, and it's never held me back from doing or understanding something.

I'm sure there are some areas of the field I'll have difficulty with (low level graphics, etc..), but even then I find that with enough hard work and an alternative approach to understanding the problem I can get things done.

[throwawasiudy]

it's a big field, but so is electrical/mechanical/structural/civil engineering.

I think they'res enough basic skills in common with different flavors of development that there could be a common set of core skills and concentrations or special accreditation for the unusual stuff