>Bad idea. It's been proposed on and off for years that software engineers be licensed, but cooler heads prevail. Programming resembles science or engineering as much as the sofa in my living room resembles the flowers in the garden.

The licensing is necessarily tied to a given technology, pretty much like welders have separate licenses for gas and arc and pressure-tight welding. There simply can't be an universal software license - a Java programmer wouldn't be able to tie his shoelaces in Cobol and vice versa.

The certificates given by vendors, however, are actually sold by vendors. They do require knowledge, of course, so their diplomas are worth something, but for them it's just another way to make money and tie the users into a community.

Certification of programmers, or more frequently the software, was proposed several times here. Every time we knew who was behind the attempt, and who expected to make big money on it, even before the ink dried on the proposal.