True it was an arrogant statement. And I apologise if it was over the top.

However my main point is that to be a successful programmer takes dedication but not only that a vocation. Like being a good Doctor, Nurse, Lawyer whatever.

The best doctors etc usually have always wanted to do it. If they didn't they tend to drop out in the first year of University because it's exceptionally hard work.

I agree that software development is still a profession in its infancy. However it is a profession which is suffering, in my opinion, because there's no standards body.

Take the British Government who have just spent around £4 Billion on their National Health Service computer system, and it still doesn't work. It's a **** database for goodness sake. How hard can that be ?

Google copes with more clients every minute than the NHS computers deal with in a week, I'll bet. And I bet they didn't spend anything like that much.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the price of this is because there is no standards body to give people certification. In management of a large scale product all the way down to actually coding and testing it.

I feel there's still a tendency to throw large numbers of cheap, low-quality programmers at a problem instead of employing a few good-quality programmers for the same money paying each more.

But how do we know who's a good-quality programmer verses a low-quality programmer ? There's no certification !

This theory also explains why there's so much outsourcing going on.

Darwen.