[will_brown]

>I know there is virtually no concept of "licensing" for the fields of "developer" or "hacker" in the way lawyers and doctors have it (i.e. you can't call yourself a lawyer just because you're reading case law for fun)

Very rarely will you hear an attorney/lawyer so tongue and cheek refer to themselves as a such, more generally they will reference "I practice law". I know the term is used for Doctors as well, "practicing medicine". The idea is the medical and legal professions and their standards are constantly changing, but the professionals are constantly continuing their education of the profession as well as incorporating the latest advances/techniques. If a CS student described what they do as the "practice of coding" instead of describing themselves as a coder/hacker/developer I think it would be a clear and professional description.

However, I see your point unlike a "practicing" doctor or lawyer, whom you know is licensed from the very term, "there is virtually no concept of "licensing" for the fields of "developer" or "hacker" in the way lawyers and doctors have it". I do not know how practical this is, but perhaps there should be licensing for various programming languages like MS has certificates for MSCE, after all lawyers did not always have to go to law school to become members of state bars and in fact some of the best US Supreme Court Justices, and most well written, never went to law school - nevertheless bar requirements evolved to raise the standards of the profession.

[svachalek]

Pretty much all engineers have some kind of professional licensing equivalent to doctors and lawyers, except in software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_profession...