http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=46672


in reply to (Ovid - on the shoulders of giants)
in thread Jaron Lanier is a Schmuck

A guild of programmers would be an interesting idea. Currently we have many, many ways to become a qualified programmer but qualified does not automatically equate to good. A point of example is my... erm... friend from uni *cough* She now has a masters degree in computer science, and a very good one at that... I know, I wrote most of the assignments for her :P

Me? I dropped out half way through my second year of my BSc :)

So, which of us is the better programmer? Obviously this is an extreme case but the point is there. She is considerably better qualified than me yet would have problems displaying 'Hello, world' on the screen. I write programs for a living and, even with no qualifications beyond my Brainbench grading, must be doing something right... people keep on offering me more and more money to do it :) :) :) :)

A guild that just offered qualifications would be next to useless... there are literally hundreds of other ways to get those qualifications. A guild that maintained a level of membership based on it's members consistantly meeting fixed criteria would be totally revoloutionary.

It is certainly worth thinking about...