>Anyway as for us programmers there are very few jobs where a poorly written program will cause anyone any harm especially since it can be reviewed, tested, and corrected before being used for real, unlike a doctor who must use their skills on the fly and get it right first time, every time.
That's as true for any scientific or engineer field, for architects, pianists, lawyers, painters end economists as is for people designing and writing software.
And yet, all those occupations are generally practiced by people with a degree, who did a lot of study and practice. No watching YouTube videos, no 3 week boot camp will lend you a job as a physicist, concert piano player, economist or architect.
Is not that we don't have a high bar in this field, is that we don't have any bar at all. A programmer is a person who calls himself a programmer. Even car mechanics and construction workers are held at much higher standards than this.
"Even car mechanics and construction workers are held at much higher standards than this."
This is not universally true. Many of the best blue collar wokers I've worked with had no formal training or certification, some have. A few trained and certified blue collar workers I've known have been mediocore at best.
The alumni of certifications, official training, and schools are only as good as the integrity of the institution and of the alum.
More broadly people who refer computing to the standard of construction/architecture would likely be severely disappointed if they had a glimpse how the latter is really done.
Until very recently the most skilled people in our field had no degree because such degrees didn’t exist when they started.
Car mechanics went through the same shift where learning how to fix cars was an on the job thing and many still don’t have a relevant degree. Construction work is an old profession, but still mostly an on the job thing outside of heavy equipment.
That's as true for any scientific or engineer field, for architects, pianists, lawyers, painters end economists as is for people designing and writing software.
And yet, all those occupations are generally practiced by people with a degree, who did a lot of study and practice. No watching YouTube videos, no 3 week boot camp will lend you a job as a physicist, concert piano player, economist or architect.
Is not that we don't have a high bar in this field, is that we don't have any bar at all. A programmer is a person who calls himself a programmer. Even car mechanics and construction workers are held at much higher standards than this.