Hacker News Reader

Comment by social_quotient | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t the root of this need to make developers code stuff to prove their skills because we don’t have an accredited body giving people meaningful certification?

A dr would not do a quick surgery and a power plant engineer won’t build “just a quick test reactor” because they have credentials and the hiring bodies trust those creds.

In software is the problem that we don’t trust what the resume implies? Where does the deep distrust come from? Why don’t we have an equivalent to a medical, legal, or engineering accreditation?

(I’ll state the obvious ghosting was wrong)

View on HN

It goes beyond upfront accreditation. Doctors and lawyers get accredited credentials, sure, but more importantly they're also subject to strict regulations around malpractice. You can BS your way through most degree programs, but you can't BS your way through a law or medical practice because sooner or later you'll wind up doing something illegal and be stripped of the right to practice.

In software, it would not be enough just to require a degree. We'd have to also have some auditing entity that ensured the software written in practice conformed with the standards of professional engineering. And as the industry stands today, that applies to 0% of software created in a professional setting, never mind that very few corporations would be cool with auditors poking around in their code, at least without strict NDAs.

Not that I'm arguing that we should go this way. I for one embrace the wild west era of software for as long as it lasts. But if we were to give accreditation any weight, it would have to come accompanied with a standardized method to verify the accreditation is actually meaningful.

I suppose it has more to do with developers dealing more with logical systems than with physical and legal systems that have more direct and immediate consequences. In the case with doctors and lawyers, a bad process will have a more visible impact. In software, there's lots of "bad code" that still operates with the expected outcomes, regardless of the processes used (or ignored) that took them there.

Auditing and forensics does seem to get applied more frequently in cryptocurrency projects, but as you said, that sort of accreditation still has to be meaningful.

Historically, professional accreditation came from the need to protect the general public from harm. Random people can't use "doctor" or "engineer" in their job titles because the consequences of incompetence means loss of life. For most software development jobs, the worst outcome is probably user inconvenience.

Having the candidate actually write something and describe their thought process shows very quickly what their level is. Also most candidates fail the test. It's liken hiring an artist without looking at their work - anyone can claim to be one, but is their work the kind you need.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com