This frequently comes up in discussions like this. Licensure is a joke with respect to demonstrating competency. Yes, the initial hurdle is high. However, once you are licensed it's hard to lose it. I would never rely on licensure as a measure of competency or currency.

On top of that, many electrical and mechanical engineers are not licensed because they don't need to be. (Everybody likes to jump to the civils in these discussions and forget about us, since civils are basically required to be licensed.). EEs and MEs don't get put through the same bullshit that this industry puts developers through.

This is true, and I regard that as a reflection of the immaturity of this industry.

I hear this a lot but I think it's deeper than that, such that letting the industry age isn't going to lead to the same end. The issue is the very one that is in this thread: programming is at a weird intersection between art, science, math, and engineering. Credentials and licensing matter a lot less than simple output. You can gain a ton of experience in the field even if you're stranded on an island with no internet and just a solar powered laptop capable of executing new code. Even without a computer you can still work like a mathematician and propose problems, even creative problems with no engineering applications, and then solve by coming up with and writing down algorithms for a computer you don't have. You can imagine arbitrary business details that get in the way of a clean program and force you to start thinking in architecture and system design.

Demanding a portfolio isn't a great hiring strategy simply because a lot of people's best work isn't out in the open. Who would demand a portfolio from someone like Mike Acton? It'd be enough to know what he's worked on and talk to him. And at the same time requiring a licensing proxy is no help either, he never went to college AFAIK and that'd probably be a minimum requirement for most actual licensing proposals.