{"id":741,"date":"2006-09-27T22:02:06","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T12:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/27\/doctor-hacker\/"},"modified":"2006-09-27T22:02:06","modified_gmt":"2006-09-27T12:02:06","slug":"doctor-hacker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/27\/doctor-hacker\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor != Hacker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on manadotry registration of IT professionals.<\/p>\n

Having the argument for this and comparing to “we have it for doctors” doesn’t fly. If you start playing doctor on random people, you can kill them.<\/p>\n

Writing code and whacking it up on the net can in no way directly cause harm to someone the same way as DIY heart surgery could.<\/p>\n

Anybody who goes and grabs random code out in the wild and runs a system on it on which human life depends gets everything they deserve. They’re the bad guys here – not those writing and sharing code.<\/p>\n

So how do you make sure this person constructing a system on which life depends is competant? The same way you do for everybody you hire – check their resume, talk to them, have appropriate checks and balances in place.<\/p>\n

Just because somebody has a sheet of paper means nothing about their actual ability. Remember those crappy teachers from your school years? They all had teaching degrees. Rember how the university student tutor you had was a lot better than the teacher? Hrrm… that teaching degree obviously means a lot when it comes to ability then.
\nI certainly wouldn’t hire at least 80% of my past fellew undergrad students – even though they have the same sheet of paper as me.<\/p>\n

Please, everybody go read The Daily WTF<\/a> and see how much even experts with certifications can get it so, so, so wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on manadotry registration of IT professionals. Having the argument for this and comparing to “we have it for doctors” doesn’t fly. If you start playing doctor on random people, you can kill them. Writing code and whacking it up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-the-universe-and-everything","category-linux-aus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5a6n8-bX","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2907,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/25\/there-is-a-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":741,"position":0},"title":"There is a story….","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2012-05-25","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a friend who is fond of telling a story from way back in November 2008 at the OpenSQL camp in Charlottesville, Virgina. This was relatively shortly after we had announced to the public that we'd started something called Drizzle\u00c2\u00a0(we did that at OSCON) and was even closer to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "drizzle"","block_context":{"text":"drizzle","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/work-et-al\/drizzle-work-et-al\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3784,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/31\/testing-that-all-projects-need\/","url_meta":{"origin":741,"position":1},"title":"Testing that all projects need","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2014-07-31","format":false,"excerpt":"Today, I was reminded of a Jim Starkey quote on the Random Query Generator: \"The Colonoscopy of Database Software\" - Jim Starkey If your project does not have something that you can adapt that quote to, odds are your testing is inadequate.","rel":"","context":"In "code"","block_context":{"text":"code","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1736,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/13\/random-query-generator-added-to-drizzle-automation\/","url_meta":{"origin":741,"position":2},"title":"Random Query Generator added to Drizzle Automation","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2009-10-13","format":false,"excerpt":"As Lee announced, we have the Random Query Generator added to Drizzle Automation. It always amazed me that we were lacking such a fundamental testing tool for MySQL for all that time. I always found the similar (NDB API) tools for MySQL Cluster (NDB) to be really, really useful when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "drizzle"","block_context":{"text":"drizzle","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/work-et-al\/drizzle-work-et-al\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":800,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/10\/code-size-of-an-engine-versus-test-suite\/","url_meta":{"origin":741,"position":3},"title":"Code size of an engine versus test suite","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2007-03-10","format":false,"excerpt":"If you count the lines of code in the MySQL Cluster (NDB) test suite (mysql-5.1\/storage\/ndb\/test - and exclude the old ODBC stuff) you come up with about 104000 lines of code. This is in contrast to the approximate other 350,000 lines of code for the NDB engine (excluding the handler,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "mysql"","block_context":{"text":"mysql","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/work-et-al\/mysql\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3745,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/26\/efficiently-writing-to-a-log-file-from-multiple-threads\/","url_meta":{"origin":741,"position":4},"title":"Efficiently writing to a log file from multiple threads","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2014-05-26","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a pattern I keep seeing in threaded programs (or indeed multiple processes) writing to a common log file. This is more of an antipattern than a pattern, and is often found in code that has existed for years. Basically, it's having a mutex to control concurrent writing to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "code"","block_context":{"text":"code","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4839,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/02\/every-time-i-program-a-mac\/","url_meta":{"origin":741,"position":5},"title":"Every time I program a Mac…","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2022-02-02","format":false,"excerpt":"... the preferred programming language changes. I never programmed a 1980s Macintosh actually in the 1980s. It was sometime in the early 1990s that I first experienced Microsoft Basic for the Macintosh. 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