quote:

Originally posted by Import Alot of occupations have laws regarding who can call themselves a professional, in ontario at least, obviously you can to your friends and whatnot, but if you say your company or services are being offered by a professional (insert occupation here) you can find yourself in legal problems if it is not true. The ones i know of are (correct me if im wrong) Lawyers - Law Society of Upper Canada Engineering - Professional Engineers Ontario Doctors - College of Physicians and Surgeons However for relation to art a professional i find is used more as a slang term, as there is nothing regulating it, generally its a line thats passed when you either are supporting yourself with it, or have a large client base.

ministry,lawyers and doctors were the original three. (early engineering was also, but they weren't called engineers) nursing, accounting (i think), architecture, engineering


aaron. i haven't heard of the software debate. really only focused on the legal profession. its interesting though. i'll ask my prof about it. do u know any online articles?

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Originally posted by Import The ones i know of are (correct me if im wrong) Lawyers - Law Society of Upper Canada Engineering - Professional Engineers Ontario Doctors - College of Physicians and Surgeons

Don't forget accounting G-buddy.

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Originally posted by spitty accounting (i think),

Yup. Just pick which body. There are three in Canada (only one in the US and most other of the developed countries):

CA (Chartered Accountants) --> ICAO provincially here (The Institute of Charactered Accountants of Ontario) and the CICA federally across Canad (Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants)
CGA (Certified General Accountants) --> Certified General Accountants of Ontario provincially, and CGA-Canada federally.
CMA (Certified Management Accountants) --> Certified Management Accountants of Ontario provincially

They are all self-governing professional organizations. The codes of conduct and ethics you are bound to once entering them is along the same lines as the codes lawyer are held to by their professional bodies.

Very intense rules/regulations.

quote:

Originally posted by spitty no.

that was soooooooooooo RJ lol

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i think a professional is a combination of the above, to be a professional, you want the proper training, so you get the education, then from there, its all about how much effort you exert, and how talented you are, and i'd say people then later start to call you a professional, after they see your quality of work, and so you get a good reputation, as a professional.

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Originally posted by spitty aaron. i haven't heard of the software debate. really only focused on the legal profession. its interesting though. i'll ask my prof about it. do u know any online articles?

I don't think I could point you to anything authoritative in the sense that a medical or legal publication is authoritative - after all, the problem is that no one can agree on what constitutes an authority. I can show you lots of more informal write-ups, and I know that may not count much as evidence for you (it doesn't for me either), but keep in mind that there's not much good formal writing on any side of the debate.

Take note that you're probably going to find a lot of this cryptic, boring, or just one-sided (though I'm presenting both sides here). But I'm posting it anyway in case something does pique your interest. Basically most of what I've seen is written by someone in one of two camps:

(a) The failure rate is higher than other engineering disciplines because the discipline is just immature, as many other engineering discplines were a long time ago. At present, it just lacks the systemized knowledge and professional infrastructure of other disciplines. I hear this most often from academics but it does come from some in the industry. Two examples of this kind of thinking are here (fairly concise) and here (old, un-OCRed PDF warning, and long-winded, but explains much more thoroughly). What really bugs me about this group is that a lot of people in it are trying to sell some system, some methodology, usually with plenty of high-priced books and tools and seminars. Maybe the fact that there's so much snake oil here is why so many professional developers reject the argument in a knee-jerk fashion.

(b) Software engineering can never be systemized like the others because it's fundamentally different. Other disciplines are bound by the laws of nature and physics whereas software is 100% man-made and totally abstract, and it deals directly with the human element (changing requirements), and software engineering projects aren't repeatable like chemical or civil engineering, or like other professions (law has precedents, medical operations are often pretty routine). Jeff Atwood, one of the popular industry players, has a series of posts on this topic. Joel Spolsky is another big gun who talks about this frequently but it's hard to point out a specific article, they tend to come in little nuggets. There are dozens of Microsoft developers who point this out.

There are other opinions too - some say software is just math. Fred Brooks said the best analogy was a surgical team. Steve Yegge at Google thinks it's a religion and philosophy.

Seems like nobody can even decide what the hell it is, or should be, and yet it's lumped in with the engineering and professional disciplines because, well, it has to be. The consequences of failure are too severe to ignore.

And underlying all of this, or perhaps in spite of it, it's still abundantly clear who is a professional in the industry and who is not. Professionals with a few years experience can work over 10 times faster than other people with 20 years of experience, and produce results that will last in production for several years instead of a few month. Nobody's figured out how to measure how or why yet... I'd love to post a source on that, but it's hard to find a source proving that something isn't known.

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quote:

Originally posted by above'N'beyond if you get paid for the work you do you are considered a professional. simple as that

I agree, at least in those areas where there is no professional designation or governing body.