[daemin]

I did one of these a few years ago and it seemed like quite a formality, they asked vague questions about topics related to professionalism rather than any technical skill.

While I can understand that a professional body would want to ensure that people acted ethically and in good faith, I would think that it would be wiser to ensure that people graduating from technical, engineering related, and detail oriented degrees were just that. That way having an ACS seal of approval on a degree would carry some sort of weight towards the technical quality of the person, and hence would actually mean something.

Maybe it's the spaces and people I work with, but no one that I have worked with is actually a member of the ACS, despite being in industry for almost a decade.

[jacques_chester]

The reason they hammer on the Code of Ethics is because that's what other professions have.

They need to show that there's some Code that could be made enforceable by legislation. It's part of the bigger plan to lever the ACS into the same role that the law societies or the AMA enjoy.

[daemin]

As far as software is concerned, until we have proper liability for defective software, ala Civil/Mechanical Engineering (where one signs their name to the design to certify safety and fit-for-purpose), we have little right to call ourselves (Software) Engineers, and hence no real reason for a professional accreditation/certification body.

I also just looked at the website, and all of the membership levels look like rankings in a guild system to me. Spend your time, pay more money, rise in ranks. Protectionism at its finest, and even though I'm heavily a software developer, I'm still against this burden.

[jacques_chester]

Liability doesn't make sense for a lot of software. It's not like electricity where it's always potentially dangerous, civil where mistakes can cause death and dismemberment en masse and so on.

Basically software liability is just rolled up into the relevant market. Writing facebook games? It doesn't really matter to society if you get it a bit wrong. Writing pacemaker software? Then you're governed by medical device regulations.

Software's application to problems are so varied, so wide, that it's insensible to apply a single liability scheme to it.

[daemin]

Exactly my point.

The wide range of software that can be written precludes a standard measure of risk and liability, hence it eliminates the need for an (software) industry wide accreditation body.

Plus I've always found smaller more local meetups to be a better way of interacting with a specific development community.