CS 492/CS 692 W14 Role-Playing Exercise 6

Certification for Software Professionals

Team A

A group of young computer professionals who feel that computer scientists should be a self-governing, self-certifying body like engineers, doctors and lawyers, recognized in law. They are worried that standards will be imposed on them by ignorant legislators and that the proliferation of hastily-written, flawed software will bring the whole profession into disrepute.

Team B

A group of established computer scientists and workers in the software industry who believe that regulating programmers is unrealisitc: computer software does not lend itself to clear standards of acceptability, globalization dooms any local efforts at regulation and the self-governing bodies mentioned above merely perpetuate privilege and exclusion.