[Hallucinaut]

There's no chance of this happening in my view. There's way too many vested interests in the "democratisation of development" especially the likes of "coding bootcamps", limitless frameworks and tools for "code-free" development, and extremely blurred lines on things like WordPress where a "developer" could be anything from someone who can only install plugins through the front-end to crack PHP developers.

[ZephyrBlu]

I think there's more to it than this. In traditional engineering, you only need to be licensed to sign off.

You can still effectively do exactly the same job as a licensed engineer without being licensed, you just can't sign off on work (And thus be held responsible).

The way I see it, creating a license for Software Engineers doesn't really fix the issue. It just creates a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong.

[ColanR]

> It just creates a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong.

That's just how it works for other engineering disciplines; with the license, the scapegoat has the legal power to refuse responsibility until they're confident things won't go wrong.

[ZephyrBlu]

Who is ever really going to be confident in signing off on complicated software systems when in effect, it's saying, "Yes this system will absolutely not break/be breached/have something happen to it". Given the complexity of modern software, it doesn't seem like a feasible solution.

Even top software companies have things break or go wrong very frequently compared to traditional engineering.

I don't see this as a good solution in the software world.

[oldmanhorton]

I don't think it would demand that the software be infallible. If a "new type of earthquake" happens, the Civil engineers won't be responsible for their bridges failing. In the same way, if there is reasonable effort made to ensure the system is secure by standards of the time, I don't think these theoretical individuals would be blamed for particularly novel (zero day) or unpreventable (social engineering, to at least some extent) attacks.

[raxxorrax]

I learned that protected data is probably safe for a finite timescale with all currently known forms of encryption under the assumption there isn't technological advancement that severely restricts the first assessment.

[james_s_tayler]

And they will go wrong.

Hey can you put together this trillion piece jigsaw puzzle? Oh and we need you to sign off on it. You're sure it's not going to kill anyone right?

Works on my machine!

[frobozz]

Then we need you to sign off on it again after we change it next week, and the week after that.

[batty_alex]

Considering the number of large, established places that don't even do code reviews - I'm okay with this being a thing.

[Chris2048]

> Oh and we need you to sign off on it

Then you say "no". Business "needs" are important for replaceable serfs with no power to say otherwise; when the business needs engineering sign-off, you tell them what they needs to do.