[kendallpark]

> Something equivalent to what doctors have when they receive a medical license and become board certified.

In the US this requires four 8+ hour exams, spread out over at least seven years of training; each exam requires months of preparation. I have a hard time imagining most programmers would elect to jump through those sorts of hoops just to feel more confident about their jobs.

> In retrospect, I would have paid to work for a capable mentor when I started who could have validated my work and guided my efforts.

I think this idea definitely has some merit. I was very fortunate that my first big job after getting my CS degree was on a very agile team that leaned toward the bleeding edge. I wonder if there could be a way for programmers to rate the development environment of certain companies.

[Raidion]

I think a better equivalent would be something like the FE exam that mechanical engineers take out of college. It's given right at the end of college, but could be given at any time for self taught programmers.

Hard part is implementing the test to be (almost) purely problem solving and agnostic of language.

[CoolGuySteve]

Actuaries go through something similar with the SOA exams. It seems to be effective but maybe actuarial science changes more slowly than computer science.

[pbhjpbhj]

Are you mentoring someone now - is it on a commercial or personal basis?

There are a lot of certifications in computing fields, why don't they meet the need you felt (feel?) for objective acknowledgement of your skills? (From where I am they all look like primarily commercial efforts rather than efforts to provide objective recognitions of standards/abilities.)