Jeff, I'm not a programmer, but in the past the situation was similar in the publishing industry: There were lots of people with English degrees who thought they could be "editors." The part of the industry I worked in (postsecondary textbooks) developed simple copyediting tests to weed out the posers. Now, whenever someone asks me for advice about becoming a nonfiction editor, I tell them to forget whatever they learned in "English class" and instead prepare for a practical copyediting test based on the style manual in their chosen field. This makes most English majors very unhappy.