The Profession of Software Engineering

There is a titanic shift underway, unnoticed by most participants and observers in the field, where software development is rapidly moving from a trade to a profession.

Whereas in the past it has been acceptable for anybody who can put together a rudimentary program to call themselves a programmer the days where the whole community can accept this have almost passed. For most of the history of the computing field the only way to join the club of programmers was to be initiated in a sort-of apprenticeship (*) or to be almost-entirely self taught.

Today such an approach is no longer acceptable in some jurisdictions and it is to be expected the standards and registration will be required to undertake unsupervised, professional practice in the same way as the other professions are organised.

Witness accounting and the legal profession, for example, where there are several paths to entry however each culminates in a professional registration and has the requirement for continuing professsional development in order to retain this registration and hence right to practice. The Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge has some discussion as to the rationale for this approach, as do professional bodies like the IEEE Computing Society.

(*) More in another post about my own apprenticeship into software engineering and where my professional standing and ethics lies in this debate.