Sure, there are degrees and certifications but often times there is a large gap between formal academia and practical knowledge. No doubt part of the problem is that there are really no entry criteria to becoming a programmer. There’s just something a little bit different about writing code for a career. You could argue that this is quite possibly due to these being professions which hold peoples’ very lives in their hands but you could just as easily extend the analogy to numerous other professional pursuits law, teaching, even professional athletes. Of course there are exceptions – every now and then a doctor malpractices or a pilot crashes – but these are relatively rare occurrences compared to how often poor quality code is written.
Consider industries such as medicine or aviation the lower bounds of their professionalism is comparatively high and the deviation of expertise within the practitioners is comparatively low when compared to software development. Something that has always struck me as a bit unique about the software industry is the huge variances we see in professionalism.
