Comment by ocschwar
5 hours ago
This is why we need Professional Engineer licenses for software.
There are times when a product design needs to be reviewed and approved by someone who cares more about his license than about his job. It doesn't happen as often with software as it does with civil engineering, but often enough that it needs to become a thing.
And what happens when the licensing board gets politically compromised? You cant fix broken incentives by papering over another layer of administration. If the underlying incentives are opposed, the administration layer will be adapted to fit.
Civil engineering licensing works because underneath it all the incentive structure is aligned with the goals of the license. Its not about imposing morals, its about ensuring that buildings and devices are constructed to not fail, and to not fail catastrophically. The motivations of the ones who hire engineers are mostly aligned, they don't want the devices to fail either, and expose them to liability.
Medical doctor licensing also works because the incentives are mostly for patients not to be dying. But in the pharmaceuticals industry the incentive structure is different, where some rate of fatality is considered an acceptable cost of doing business, we see examples of subversion.
Sure software engineering licenses could be a great addition. But alone it will fail unless the incentive structure for those employing software engineers is aligned with the licensing goals.
This works great inside a country where said software must be written in the country for compliance reasons...
How does is work for a fungible product that can be written anywhere and shipped at the speed of light?
It doesn't, but at some point a mature industry + society decides to make that tradeoff.
We can't have it both ways: be essential digital infrastructure, AND move at "the speed of light".