I signed up for an account on developer.berlios.de back in June sometime, kinda because I always wanted to be a developer, think of myself as one. It's taken until now to actually have a project that could go up there and the other day I opened an account for galleryforge.berlios.de. When I logged into my account a few days ago to do this, there was a survey for members to take. Well, a short one. When I saw the question, I stared at it for about 2 minutes and finally decided that I couldn't decide between "yes" and "no". The other question was trivial. So I left that page, did something else, I come back to it and I stare at it again. In the space of 2 days I did this about 4-5 times. By now I had registered my project, had it approved by Berlios and been given an account for it. Knowing that this question would haunt me if I didn't get it over with, I reluctantly decided to say "yes". *click Submit*

The question was "Are you a professional software engineer?" Well, barring any unforeseen event, I will have a diploma to prove that within a couple of weeks. But what about "professional", what does that mean? That's a bit strong, isn't it? I don't have any proper professional experience yet, I'm just out of school. I've done some minor projects on the side, but that doesn't count as "professional". It's like asking if Doug Murphy is a doctor.. fair enough, he's not an amateur, he's not in his pyjamas operating on his stuffed bear, but is he a professional?