Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Mark A. Biggar" <mark@biggar.org>]

Alexandre E. Kopilovitch wrote:

> I wonder, why do you think that mentoring is more important in software
> engineering than in all classical sciences? Or in professions like doctors and
> lawyers? There is enough complexity, and safety requirements are often high
> enough. And no one of them is organized in guilds now. Even those "social"
> sciences that until recently traditionally have competing "schools" (which
> somehow resemble guilds) are gradually leaving that way.

But the other professions DO use a guild system.  Just because they
aren't called apprentices and journeymen any more (they're called
med-students and residents or law-students and associates instead)
doesn't mean those professions don't work that way.  Don't let the fact 
they call themselves the AMA and the BAR and don't use the word guild
anymore fool you, and notice that they control entry into membership
just as fanatically as any medieval guild ever did.

Yes, most good software engineers learned most of what they know from a
few good mentors (and I bless those that mentored me) and it would be
nice if it were a little more formal.

-- 
mark@biggar.org
mark.a.biggar@comcast.net