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Comment by wan23 | Hacker News Reader

Some kind of accreditation for software would save our industry so much time. It's crazy how many hours we spend asking and answering the same basic questions over and over. Imagine if we could focus on the important stuff in interviews!

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Accreditation just acts as another "has a college degree" filter. There is already a proliferation of certifications that people can attain if they wish, that may or may not help them in specific instances that try to "give you a minimum level of knowledge", but really that just means the questions you get asked assume you know that - ie they are harder and incorporate your algorithm knowledge, instead of specifically saying "code bubble sort". I don't think that's any better to be honest.

I wish there was one that would actually count. For Example if you pass the boards its a pretty rigorous test and they won't be asking you what the krebs cycle is.

I don't know enough about the boards or how doctors interview, but doesn't this just move the puck in the interview process?

For a lot of the things we build in engineering that kind of qualification would be ludicrous, yet we've created another barrier for a variety of people where there doesn't have to be one.

"Must have Super Engineer Accreditation(tm)" - it'll be the new college degree. How much does it cost to get? How much time? The girl who doesn't need to work can study all she wants and pass without having to do nights and weekends for months / years etc.

I think that in the case of software, a necessary requirement would be to have some work experience and to have someone who is also accredited to sign off on that experience BEFORE you get to take the test. It's not the same as a college degree filter, which doesn't really say anything about a person's ability to do useful work.

And the bar exams are just another "has a college degree" filter too, but they've been proven to work as a useful metric, and they are overseen by an association of professionals. And legal knowledge is way more open-ended than software knowledge, with far more subtleties in its practice. Yet. The bar exam somehow works.

>Why can't we have some sort licensing board like a medical board so that you prove you can code

Too many software developers have a strong aversion to regulatory bodies in their own profession. That really is the issue here.

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