>> "Joe the Developer is entrusted with writing code that can cost people money and cause damage. In some cases, it can endanger lives and businesses."
That's what tests are for.
That's what tests are for.
gdp is right: certifications are useful if they are rigorous, targeted and demand useful knowledge and training
I doubt most developers would say that licensing pilots or physicians is useless but that's essentially the same thing as claiming that certifying programmers is useless.
Most software is just fun stuff that makes peoples lives slightly better. Only a small amount of software is 'mission critical'.
If software breaks, it usually doesn't cause the loss of life.
Engineers are probably a better comparison: while engineers do have expensive certifications, they aren't the ones doing most of the engineering. Instead, they're the ones verifying that the engineering (done mostly by non-certified engineers) meets the design requirements.
As far as your comment about engineers being a better comparison and axod's comment that "most software is fun..." (WTF!!! do you think businesses expend millions of dollars yearly on IT so they can have "fun?"), I call bullshit! As someone with experience and in both hardware and software engineering, I can assure you that most engineering is verified by non-certified (I assume you mean PE's) engineers.
I live daily with software that has to work. Serious bugs are not tolerated in medical devices. The attitude that "oh, we can fix that in the next release, just tell the operator not to hit F8 before F7 or they'll misdiagnose the patient" simply doesn't fly around here.
Sorry for the rant, but attitudes like this are exactly why software development isn't taken seriously by most professions!
Now, what I mean by "certified" varies a bit across disciplines. The professional engineer cert is a general certification, which is generally much less useful than specific certifications for particular disciplines. The considerations in electrical engineering are considerably different from those in, say, structural engineering. While there is also significant overlap, you're not going to get a general-purpose "engineer" who can verify both.
Would it be ten? Thousand? Your yearly salary?
Certification would ensure that Joe is capable of writing tests that actually test anything, for example.