"Geeks" and licensing

From: Glen Goodwin <acme_ent_at_bellsouth.net>
Date: Sun Dec 16 16:24:50 2001

> From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>

> > Well, most of us (except for Tony) have areas that we are not expert
in, or
>
> Whereas I'm not an expert in any area, right???

Wrong. Accept a complement, okay? ;>)
 
> I am strongly of the opinion that you can't teach creativity. And thus
> you can't teach somebody to be a good programmer or a good electronic
> designer. Yes, there are things that such people need to know (and those
> can be taught, but equally good programmer/designers tend to be
> interested enough to teach themselves a lot of it).

OTOH, methodology certainly *can* be taught. Unfortunately, though, either
it isn't being taught, or the student just doesn't "get it." Some of the
crap I've seen which was written by CS degree-holders has been truly
mind-boggling due to a complete lack of structure or logic in the code.
 
> So I don't think there's _any_ correlation (or at most a very weak one)
> between qualifications and ability as a programmer/designer.

Agreed, absolutely.

> > Should programmers be licensed? Sure makes me wonder . . .
>
> I don't think so. I've seen enough 'qualified' people who I'd not trust
> anywhere near anything I owned. I've also met a few totally unqualified
> people who I'd be happy handing a toolkit to and letting them loose in my

> workshop, knowing that they'd do no real damage.
>
> And 'licenses' almost always come from 'qualifications' :-(

A test-based license is what I had in mind, but this raises all kinds of
problems (such as who designs and administers the exam, etc.) so in the end
it is probably better that the practitioners of the craft do the "weeding
out" themselves.

Personally, I'm glad to out of programming professionally, although it
remains a favorite hobby of mine. I just got so tired of having to explain
the difference between a "string" and a "character array" to some of these
folks . . . over and over . . . I could tell stories you probably wouldn't
believe, but the memory of them is causing me to lose my lunch so I think
I'd better just log off . . .

Glen
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Received on Sun Dec 16 2001 - 16:24:50 GMT