glyf.livejournal.com — I've been mulling over these ideas for quite a while, and I think I may still have more thinking to do, but recent events have gotten me thinking again about the increasing urgency of the need for a professional code of conduct for computer programmers.
Apr 2, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountApr 3, 2006
I would like to congratulate the author for making a post on Live Journal that's not a whining-emo-rant.
phoenyxApr 3, 2006
Sure adding some PHP to a website isn't much, but the programming of a radiation machine may have a huge effect on someone taking cancer treatments--too much and theyre dead. Programming effects people socially, economically, physically, etc. Look at the effect Digg has already. I work for a online store. If I somehow exposed customers' financial information, it could potentially ruin each of them financially.Computers are ubiquitous."With great power comes great responsibility" --Uncle Ben
geminitojanusApr 3, 2006
Yes, and that's why Computer Engineers still get paid s**t in comparison to Electrical Engineers and Civil Engineers. Why? Because there's not a lot of impetus to hire someone who's been through ethical training, whether or not they're an ethical person, when it's just as legal to hire someone who hasn't been through ethical training (a "Computer Scientist" for example). I honestly wish they'd just freaking rename the CS major CP, "Computer Programming", leave the Computer Science title to those who are actually doing research, and leave the Computer Engineering title to those of us (read: me) who are building computers and integrating software. But that's not going to change anytime soon, and neither will the Computer Programmers making unethical decisions to write software that's stacked against their users because, believe it or not, it's their job to do so.
geminitojanusApr 3, 2006
"PS: I think its BS the majority of my classes have nothing to do with computer programming. Had a whole semester of MS Word, for example. Intro to the internet? Puhleassse..."I had to hire someone last week to replace someone who left my company to go work for a gaming company. While I was going through hiring, I noticed 12 resum'es that I simply through in the garbage can because they contained rather obvious spelling or gramatical errors [aside: it is NOT my policy to throw them away, I'd love to take everyone as serious as possible, but my own boss has a policy that if a resum'e has an error, it goes in the garbage; if they can't take their resum'e as seriously as they take the job, they don't deserve it, in his rationale. Luckily, I had my resum'e edited by a girlfriend at the time who just so happened to be an English major, because I'm not particularly good at English]. I also noticed that those particular spelling and grammar errors are common ones to make (for example not capitalizing noun's specific names, i.e "Intel" or "Advanced Micro Devices"), but are not ones that are commonly picked up by a word processor (like Word). That being said, these people probably would have never given out these resum'es if they believed it contained an error, but since their technology decided to tell them it didn't, they believed it was true, and issued them. As a result, they didn't get the job.I'm glad your college is giving you a semester on MS Word, but the important thing to take away from this is that they're also giving you a semester on English (you know, the language you're going to be using MS Word for). So while these things may not be important now, they're going to be crucial down the line. Take it all as seriously as you would take your CS/CpE classes.
dualityApr 3, 2006
You're looking past the point. It's only partially about software that does what the user wants; mainly, it's about software that does what the user expects. For example, have you ever printed something in an application and then been disgusted because it looked significantly different on paper (and there was no preview option to let you know this)? Also, if there was a command in Unix that executed other commands at random, would you ever use that command? Probably not.The bottom line is that if the user expects his software to work in an undesired way in some instance, then he'll change the way he uses the software so that such an instance never occurs. Beyond that, he'll look for a way to use the software so that he can expect it to do what he wants. If a user truly knows what to expect, he will make the decision on his own about how to use the software, or whether to use it at all.
badgerouApr 3, 2006
Not quite. They post mentions the IEEE/ACM ethics code, but he thinks that it's too esoteric to be of any real good.
badgerouApr 3, 2006
This is going to be kind of an obvious example, but I'm trying to illustrate what the author was saying ...I believe his point is that if you're programming a web browser, your user is someone who wants to browse the web. If you were to include a feature to defrag the hard-drive, that would be bad design -- and would probably be unethical. Additionally, if your web-browser would automatically block websites that *you* have deemed to be "bad" (such as /. if you're an avid digg user), that would be unethical.He's not talking about the teeth-pulling that usually accompanies getting the user requirements -- it's always a challenge, but not the thrust of his column.
foofyApr 4, 2006
Sorry, I just can't take this article seriously given that it's posted on LiveJournal. That and it's obscene length.
Closed AccountApr 7, 2006
You're right, I should get as much as I can from the classes, even if the connection isn't immediately obvious. I'm sure having extra classes looks better than not having them, it just bugs me that it's a factor in the first place. The way I see it, if I didn't know how to use MS Word, I probably shouldn't be taking Computer Programming. As for English, I think 12 years is enough. Maybe a specialized workshop here and there, like resume building, but I see no need to teach me how to write a book report based on a fictional novel, again.