Licensed Professions

Other safety-critical professions require licensure built on the four Es: Education, Examination, Experience, and Ethics. A civil engineer or physician can lose the right to practice.

Software developers are routinely called "engineers," borrowing that credibility, but the title carries none of the accountability. There is no licensing exam, no ethics board, no credential to revoke.

The word implies a standard the field has never adopted.

Discussion prompts

• What would it take for "software engineer" to require the same licensure as other engineering disciplines?
• If your team had to pass an ethics exam to ship code, what would change?
• Which of the four Es would be hardest to standardize for software, and why?