[ashurbanipal]

This is a great idea - is there any reason why there isn't a generally accepted coding equivalent of a CPA or a CMT or any of the other very successful professional certification programs out there? Does the field move too quickly? Is there too much dispersion in talent (or perceived dispersion) by programmers themselves to make it worth turning them into "certified programmers"?

[woodman]

There are a lot of things in computer science that are very stable points for the certification industry to hook into, foundational things - like where it overlaps with philosophy (logic) and math (set theory, etc). I'm all for higher quality code, but are we going to require web developers to master first order logic before they can throw up isitdownrightnow.com? Specialization is why we aren't dying from rotten teeth or soldering daughter-boards into our PCs anymore, abstraction is what allows us to progress at breakneck speeds. I guess there is a point where the two lines meet, the burden of bureaucracy and rate of quality work - protocol standards come to mind. But I don't think the correct place to lay that burden is at the individual level, put it higher up the stack - company liability for private information disclosure. I guarantee you'd see a steep decline in the number of companies demanding your social security number.