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> At some point legislators are going to come and ask the question how we stop things like this happening Bob Martin talks about it a lot, how the software dev

> At some point legislators are going to come and ask the question how we stop things like this happening Bob Martin talks about it a lot, how the software developers of the world need to have an "oath", like the hippocratic oath. Two posts that summarize things well (but there might be more where he talks about these things) https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2011/01/17/software-craftsmanship-is-about.html https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2011/01/17/software-cr... https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2015/11/18/TheProgrammersOath.html https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2015/11/18/TheProgramm...

throwaway210222 5y ago
"software developers… need to have an "oath", like the hippocratic oath." More importantly, the employers of software engineers must have ZERO option to emply a software engineer (anywhere on earth) that doesn't have the same oath. Doctors have a monospony on their services that makes their oath work: the hospital manager cannot just go hire un-oathed doctors. Never going to happen in software. Ever.
- vageli 5y ago
  The practice of medicine was not a licensed endeavor at its inception, and that changed over time. With that in mind, what makes you say "Never going to happen in software. Ever."?
vlovich123 5y ago
An oath isn’t going to do anything without any way to enforce it legally. The Hippocratic oath is neat but the real teeth are in enforcement against malpractice like civil and criminal lawsuits and a licensing body. You see similar things for lawyers and certain engineers (in commonwealth countries “professional engineer” is a restricted title like Lawyer or MD). Note that just doing that won’t solve all problems either. These licensing bodies regularly publish enforcement actions, so malfeasance continues. Nominally they can help whistleblowers but, as with all regulatory bodies, there’s always a risk of regulatory capture making such actions still peril-filled. Moreover it’s not even clear this particular work even fall under traditional definitions that would required a licensed engineer as those deal with public safety (bridge construction, buildings, etc) and something like this doesn’t really. We’d need an updated definition that takes into account the software needs of the world (privacy and security, etc).
PaulKeeble 5y ago
Doctors don't follow the hippocratic oath in practice, it just isn't a real consideration. If they did none of these covid long haulers or ME patients would have been tortured into worse conditions, nor would all those mentally ill patients have been locked up. Medicine treats the oath like software developers treat most best practices that reduce bug counts, as a nice to have but no one has time for.

throwaway210222 5y ago

"software developers… need to have an "oath", like the hippocratic oath." More importantly, the employers of software engineers must have ZERO option to emply a software engineer (anywhere on earth) that doesn't have the same oath. Doctors have a monospony on their services that makes their oath work: the hospital manager cannot just go hire un-oathed doctors. Never going to happen in software. Ever.

vageli 5y ago
The practice of medicine was not a licensed endeavor at its inception, and that changed over time. With that in mind, what makes you say "Never going to happen in software. Ever."?

vlovich123 5y ago

An oath isn’t going to do anything without any way to enforce it legally. The Hippocratic oath is neat but the real teeth are in enforcement against malpractice like civil and criminal lawsuits and a licensing body. You see similar things for lawyers and certain engineers (in commonwealth countries “professional engineer” is a restricted title like Lawyer or MD). Note that just doing that won’t solve all problems either. These licensing bodies regularly publish enforcement actions, so malfeasance continues. Nominally they can help whistleblowers but, as with all regulatory bodies, there’s always a risk of regulatory capture making such actions still peril-filled. Moreover it’s not even clear this particular work even fall under traditional definitions that would required a licensed engineer as those deal with public safety (bridge construction, buildings, etc) and something like this doesn’t really. We’d need an updated definition that takes into account the software needs of the world (privacy and security, etc).

PaulKeeble 5y ago

Doctors don't follow the hippocratic oath in practice, it just isn't a real consideration. If they did none of these covid long haulers or ME patients would have been tortured into worse conditions, nor would all those mentally ill patients have been locked up. Medicine treats the oath like software developers treat most best practices that reduce bug counts, as a nice to have but no one has time for.