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Soon programming will itself require a license. Only government approved individuals will be able to write code. CPUs will only boot software signed by the government.

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"Software engineering" is one of the few large practices with 'engineering' in its name that has no mechanism for license granting and revocation for violation of professional standard.

That's not what is happening here, but we might see that happen in our lifetimes. Hopefully before someone writes the software that kills enough people to necessitate licensing, not after (since generally, such outcomes are how licensing comes into being).

You only need the license to work professionally, of course. You don't need a bridge building license to build with Lego.

You could argue that we have security licenses (eg SOC 2), however I don't think it actually succeeds in making software safe. I think software is hard because unlike a bridge, which is built with limited scope and the risk is known when it's designed, software grows to become load bearing without us really realizing it. Eg CrowdStrike, I never would have assumed that an outage could affect so much of the world.

Pretty clear this is the direction seeing Google's crackdown on sideloading apps on Android.

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