Professional licensing and the social transformation of software engineers

摘要

There are numerous published debates on the pros and cons of software licensing and it has already been suggested that software engineering as a profession can be compared to the medical profession. This paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the evolution of the medical profession to that of software engineering. This analysis supports the contention that licensing will occur but that we must wait longer, perhaps much longer before the professional societies finally agree on the criteria for licensing.