We have some certs. The problem is that software development is about thirty different skills in a trench coat, and half of them we don't know how to evaluate (like slicing, or abstraction.)
What ends up happening is that our certs end up being a bunch of multiple-choice questions that check people's ability to memorize trivia.
It is more like having a Certified Novel Writer or Certified Mural Painter or Certified Graphic Designer certificate than it is like HVAC or welding.
It would be nice if there was at least a bare bones certificate that guaranteed the candidate knows at least some absolutely minimal baseline, like what a for loop and if statement is. You’d still have to interview the candidate but you wouldn’t have to start at Hello World or FizzBuzz.
I have interviewed at least one self-described Senior Software Engineer who didn’t know how to write a function that takes an integer parameter and then prints every integer from 0 to the argument passed.
People do take university courses in doing creative stuff, a fair number of sucessful novelists seem to have done one, RPG proposed that we could have something similar for software [1].
What ends up happening is that our certs end up being a bunch of multiple-choice questions that check people's ability to memorize trivia.
It is more like having a Certified Novel Writer or Certified Mural Painter or Certified Graphic Designer certificate than it is like HVAC or welding.