The opposition to certification and professional organization is truly bizarre. It would likely do much more good than harm to the profession of software engineering, yet that furious opposition always ensues whenever you bring it up.
In addition to the points you make, real certification (as opposed to a four year degree, which anyone willing to go into debt can get) would simplify interviewing and reduce the "whiteboard hazing" and "throw darts at a dart board" methods we use today for finding good candidates. Organization would help fight for a proper career path for programmers, rather than having to, as an individual, constantly negotiate and hop from one employer to another in order to advance.
> real certification ... would simplify interviewing
Well, I admire your optimism, and as much as I wish there were professional licensing for software professionals, I doubt that any licensing exam could ever be so rigorous that at least a few charlatans wouldn't be able to squeak through it.
A four year degree is a certification. What would a "real certification" do differently to make it "real"?
> would simplify interviewing and reduce the "whiteboard hazing"
I doubt it. If a certification is too specific it'll exclude an enormous amount of engineers. Make it too broad and then companies will still have to do the same interviews they do now to verify that a person is a good fit for the specific job opening they want to fill.
I'm eager to hear your proposal on a certification method that doesn't exclude wide swaths of existing and future engineers based on your specific definition of what a software engineer is and isn't, but at the same time is specific enough that having the certification actually means something to other people.
>The opposition to certification and professional organization is truly bizarre. It would likely do much more good than harm to the profession of software engineering, yet that furious opposition always ensues whenever you bring it up.
Most likely it is because a great many programmers without a formal college education or with a non-CS college education think that certification might be used to demote them to second-class citizens. And, without commenting on the rightness or wrongness of it, they wouldn't necessarily be incorrect about that either; such an exam would most likely have a strong focus on CS topics.
In addition to the points you make, real certification (as opposed to a four year degree, which anyone willing to go into debt can get) would simplify interviewing and reduce the "whiteboard hazing" and "throw darts at a dart board" methods we use today for finding good candidates. Organization would help fight for a proper career path for programmers, rather than having to, as an individual, constantly negotiate and hop from one employer to another in order to advance.