this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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267
Let's blame the dev who pressed "Deploy" (yieldcode.blog)
submitted 5 months ago by Brkdncr to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Or it needs to be a profession.

Licensed professional engineers are expected to push back on requests that endanger the public and face legal liability if they don't. Software has hit the point where failure is causing the economic damage of a bridge collapsing.

[–] aodhsishaj 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like the kind of oversight that tends to come with a union and the representation therein.

[–] mriormro 2 points 5 months ago

Lol, sadly not. Most professions do not have unions and representation, such that it is, falls mostly to the accreditation group.

[–] aidan 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Software engineering is too wide and deep for licensing to be feasible without a degree program- which would be a massive slap in the face to the millions of skilled self taught devs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Some states let some people get professional licensure through experience alone. It just ends up taking more than a decade of experience to meet the equivalent requirements of a four year degree.

[–] aidan 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeaaa that's not exactly a solution

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why not? It is still valuing the self education of people. It just means having a license to manage the system requires people with significant experience.

And it isn't like a degree alone is required for licensure.

[–] aidan 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Because a decade of professional experience is a long time, and doesn't value independent experience. I've been coding for over 11 years, but professionally only a couple. Also software development is very international, how would that even be managed when working with self-taught people across continents?

I agree developers should be responsible, but licensing isn't it, when there are 16 year olds that are better devs than master's graduates.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do we allow for self taught doctors or accountants?

Also, these regulations aren't being developed for all servers, just ones that can cause major economic damage if they stop functioning. And you don't need everyone to be qualified to run the service. How many water treatment pants are there where you only have a small set of managers running the plant, but most people aren't licensed to do so?

[–] aidan 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do we allow for self taught doctors or accountants?

Is this limitation good? Furthermore, software development is something very easy to learn with 0 consequences.

Also, these regulations aren't being developed for all servers, just ones that can cause major economic damage if they stop functioning.

Many of those have excellent self-taught devs developing software for them- I know some of them.

And you don't need everyone to be qualified to run the service. How many water treatment pants are there where you only have a small set of managers running the plant, but most people aren't licensed to do so?

  1. Maintenance is very different from software development.

  2. Good software development requires at minimum expansive automated testing...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do you trust anyone claiming to be self taught with the responsibility to design something that, if it fails, will cause billions in economic damage? Not the people you know, anyone who claims to be self taught?

[–] aidan 1 points 5 months ago

I shouldn't be trusted if I hire without vetting and hand over control of a massive project to someone off the street without any QA controls, code review, or automated testing.

[–] mriormro 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Then you do not get licensed and cannot work on certain projects that may require a licensed or accredited team.

Licensure isn't about how good you are. It's about ensuring that you, as a professional, understand the ramifications of your contributions to the work you do and the field you are a part of and accepting the responsibility of those ramifications. Continuing education is also a huge part of it but I don't think software engineers have much issue there.

[–] aidan 1 points 5 months ago

Licensure isn't about how good you are. It's about ensuring that you, as a professional, understand the ramifications of your contributions to the work you do and the field you are a part of and accepting the responsibility of those ramifications.

  1. Does it have a record across industries of demonstrably doing that? I don't believe so.

  2. Is there any evidence of that actually being a problem amongst self-taught devs? (And not a problem amongst traditionally degree'd devs?)

In my experience, self-taught devs have a higher sense of responsibility when it comes to code than fresh grads or boot-camp devs. But of course once someone's been working for a bit it all evens out.

[–] Wilzax 2 points 5 months ago

And in the cases of healthcare and emergency dispatch, loss of life as well.