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This article seems focused on doing no harm "to code". To a degree, it's ridiculous. The point is to do no harm to your fellow employees. It's already obvious

This article seems focused on doing no harm "to code". To a degree, it's ridiculous. The point is to do no harm to your fellow employees. It's already obvious that a sign directing cars to drive off a pier isn't morally ok. Comments, names, and code structures which mislead and misdirect are also wrong. If someone discovered a finely crafted historical artifact, and not understanding its beauty and significance, proceeded to cut it apart for scrap, many people would think that "a damn shame" and some would even think that morally wrong. Also, suggesting that someone from outside the US is more likely to give you unsatisfactory performance is simply racist. If the cause is held to be race, then it is racist, trivially speaking. However, the underlying (first principles) causation is driven by incentives. For example, I've worked in places where the outgoing FTP ports were wide open, and where I knew that someone, somewhere would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, for exfiltrated data. No way in hell would I or my coworkers ever have done that, because we knew that large corporations and governments would be likely to figure out what happened, and would be after us for years or decades until we were dead or caught. The above incentive structure changes a lot, if you know that a sovereign government is willing to give you cover. At a less extreme level, outsourcing companies are often staffed by novices who are just looking to get promoted or change to a higher paying job somewhere else. The incentives are still misaligned.

yakubin 7y ago
> The point is to do no harm to your fellow employees. It's already obvious that a sign directing cars to drive off a pier isn't morally ok. Comments, names, and code structures which mislead and misdirect are also wrong. The primary purpose of the code we write is/should be to serve a function. Being legible to others is a secondary aspect. If the function the code is supposed to fulfill is immoral, then I would really prefer it to (a) not work properly, (b) be misleading, (c) have crappy documentation, (d) build only during a full moon when you hold a beer bottle in a horizontal position above your monitor while standing on one leg.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  The primary purpose of the code we write is/should be to serve a function. Being legible to others is a secondary aspect. In terms of cost/benefit, the cost of the programmer time in debugging far outweighs the cost of executing the code. If the function the code is supposed to fulfill is immoral Two wrongs don't make a right. Whistleblowing is to be preferred to sabotage.
  - yakubin 7y ago
    Oh, I don't see anything inherently wrong in sabotage. And remember that it's an article about a hypothetical hippocratic oath for software developers we are talking about. Imagine if the oath doctors took was about being nice to other doctors and not obligations to the patients. And whistleblowing will get you nowhere when everybody knows everything, it's just the way our economy is built that makes these "evil companies" flourish. It's worth remembering that you have a (limited) choice when looking for a job. I for one would be very happy writing software for the operation of trains or something similar. This is quite useful. Going to work for a company selling financial services I pretty much have a guarantee of harming people or not contributing to anything in any way at best.
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      Oh, I don't see anything inherently wrong in sabotage. Isn't that cheating? Isn't that betraying trust? Going to work for a company selling financial services I pretty much have a guarantee of harming people or not contributing to anything in any way at best. I think one should distrust these sorts of absolute condemnations of entire industries. Can you substantiate what you just wrote? Can you provide ironclad proof that all financial services companies are "evil?" In my opinion, the notion that, "Evil is okay to perform, so long as it's against those I don't like," is a sign that someone, somewhere doesn't understand principles and the concept of "evil."
      - yakubin 7y ago
        > Isn't that cheating? Isn't that betraying trust? Of course. > I think one should distrust these sorts of absolute condemnations of entire industries. Can you substantiate what you just wrote? Can you provide ironclad proof that all financial services companies are "evil?" It suffices to say that it is in the best interest of these companies to fool the people when they operate under current economic system. 2008 is one such example. Goldman Sachs owners getting rich, just the customers getting screwed is an extreme-case example. "Proof"? "All financial services"? Now you sound as if you expected me to produce a mathematical proof. I'm just talking about what the reasonable expectations are when considering different job offers. In today's startup-fueled climate I can phrase this way: a startup finds a solution to a problem noone knew they had, it spends time marketing it, ... Oh, back to the beginning: startup announces that it found a solution to a problem. Now they don't actually have any working code. They struggle to make a PoC for months, after that another PoC, ... Nothing actually does anything, just suffices to produce the illusion that something is being done and that something will eventually do something. All this just to keep the ball of fundraising rolling. The investors know it's all bullshit, but it's all not about getting a product in the end. It's about speculating what the next big thing will be. But it's all unimportant. Just keep the appearances and keep the money flowing. But don't fool yourself that any regular guy will benefit from what you're doing. For me it's depressing. But there are a lot of software developers who are just fine with it for the sake of a high salary. > In my opinion, the notion that, "Evil is okay to perform, so long as it's against those I don't like," is a sign that someone, somewhere doesn't understand principles and the concept of "evil." Classifying things unambiguously into "good" and "evil" may be unproductive. It's all a matter of context. I'd say that when your superior/boss requests you to harm others, you don't owe them obedience. Disobedience, cheating etc. aren't inherently "evil".

yakubin 7y ago

> The point is to do no harm to your fellow employees. It's already obvious that a sign directing cars to drive off a pier isn't morally ok. Comments, names, and code structures which mislead and misdirect are also wrong. The primary purpose of the code we write is/should be to serve a function. Being legible to others is a secondary aspect. If the function the code is supposed to fulfill is immoral, then I would really prefer it to (a) not work properly, (b) be misleading, (c) have crappy documentation, (d) build only during a full moon when you hold a beer bottle in a horizontal position above your monitor while standing on one leg.

stcredzero 7y ago
The primary purpose of the code we write is/should be to serve a function. Being legible to others is a secondary aspect. In terms of cost/benefit, the cost of the programmer time in debugging far outweighs the cost of executing the code. If the function the code is supposed to fulfill is immoral Two wrongs don't make a right. Whistleblowing is to be preferred to sabotage.
- yakubin 7y ago
  Oh, I don't see anything inherently wrong in sabotage. And remember that it's an article about a hypothetical hippocratic oath for software developers we are talking about. Imagine if the oath doctors took was about being nice to other doctors and not obligations to the patients. And whistleblowing will get you nowhere when everybody knows everything, it's just the way our economy is built that makes these "evil companies" flourish. It's worth remembering that you have a (limited) choice when looking for a job. I for one would be very happy writing software for the operation of trains or something similar. This is quite useful. Going to work for a company selling financial services I pretty much have a guarantee of harming people or not contributing to anything in any way at best.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    Oh, I don't see anything inherently wrong in sabotage. Isn't that cheating? Isn't that betraying trust? Going to work for a company selling financial services I pretty much have a guarantee of harming people or not contributing to anything in any way at best. I think one should distrust these sorts of absolute condemnations of entire industries. Can you substantiate what you just wrote? Can you provide ironclad proof that all financial services companies are "evil?" In my opinion, the notion that, "Evil is okay to perform, so long as it's against those I don't like," is a sign that someone, somewhere doesn't understand principles and the concept of "evil."
    - yakubin 7y ago
      > Isn't that cheating? Isn't that betraying trust? Of course. > I think one should distrust these sorts of absolute condemnations of entire industries. Can you substantiate what you just wrote? Can you provide ironclad proof that all financial services companies are "evil?" It suffices to say that it is in the best interest of these companies to fool the people when they operate under current economic system. 2008 is one such example. Goldman Sachs owners getting rich, just the customers getting screwed is an extreme-case example. "Proof"? "All financial services"? Now you sound as if you expected me to produce a mathematical proof. I'm just talking about what the reasonable expectations are when considering different job offers. In today's startup-fueled climate I can phrase this way: a startup finds a solution to a problem noone knew they had, it spends time marketing it, ... Oh, back to the beginning: startup announces that it found a solution to a problem. Now they don't actually have any working code. They struggle to make a PoC for months, after that another PoC, ... Nothing actually does anything, just suffices to produce the illusion that something is being done and that something will eventually do something. All this just to keep the ball of fundraising rolling. The investors know it's all bullshit, but it's all not about getting a product in the end. It's about speculating what the next big thing will be. But it's all unimportant. Just keep the appearances and keep the money flowing. But don't fool yourself that any regular guy will benefit from what you're doing. For me it's depressing. But there are a lot of software developers who are just fine with it for the sake of a high salary. > In my opinion, the notion that, "Evil is okay to perform, so long as it's against those I don't like," is a sign that someone, somewhere doesn't understand principles and the concept of "evil." Classifying things unambiguously into "good" and "evil" may be unproductive. It's all a matter of context. I'd say that when your superior/boss requests you to harm others, you don't owe them obedience. Disobedience, cheating etc. aren't inherently "evil".