Every country I know has an obligatory driving license before you are allowed to drive a car by yourself.

No country I know has an obligatory coding license before you are allowed to code by yourself.

The longer the time that passed between the driving license and the current day, the more reckless and careless drivers have become. What I mean is that new drivers are careful. For the rules, for their passengers, for other cars and people. The longer they drive, the more they bend the rules, pass yellow or red lights, or speed just a tiny bit. Everonye does it, why shouldn’t they do it as well. No one is looking anyway…

I won’t argue for a coding license. It would be fruitless anyway, and it would be too hard to establish a standard. But there so many simple (not easy) wins you could have with the proper knowledge and attitude. So many legacy systems less and so many more successful projects.

When was the last time you compared your skills in coding with other people and had the possibility to spot places you could improve? How do you score your ability anyway? How do you decide what to learn or focus on?

Do you decide these things before you start to code on a project, or do you only find out in hindsight, when issues arise or new features begin to get harder to realize? Do keep a list of problems you identified and make sure you avoid them in the future?

I’ll take the next week to look into this more.