On the other hand, if you have a degree and years of experience, would a license matter? I wouldn't object to licensing for programmers. At least there would be common standards, not random whiteboarding.

Of course, you realize that licensing has a dangerous downside. If you're a licensed programmer and your company get hacked because of your bug, you would be liable. If your code fails to detect a pedestrian or fails to brake, you're liable for murder. If the Ariane rocket is destroyed and a multi-million dollar satellite is destroyed, you're now deeply in debt. If your Therac 25 software makes a mistake, again... murder. So be careful what you wish for.

At a robot company I worked for we agonized over this. Could a robot, driven by our software, accidently kill someone? To get around this we put up hardware safeguards; chain link fences with kill switches on gates, pressure pads with kill switches on floors, and any other hardware we could invent. In theory, we programmers were not liable, but if we were licensed we probably would have been.

So, yeah, license programmers. Require a degree. Require certification. Require certification in the language you use and yearly refresher courses. Require proof-carrying code. Require financial bonds to cover losses caused by your code. Require insurance to cover losses covered by your code.

That's probably a good solution to the whiteboarding issue.