3 ms·

Programmers are not held liable. If you go to another industry, such as construction, it's not the case.

mr_00ff00 3y ago
Man, the crazy future where programmers are punished for bad code. The sheer amount of trails would break our legal system.
- mikrl 3y ago
  A lawsuit against the author, the intern who +1d the PR, the senior who approved the PR, the engineer who ran the linter, the engineer who changed a variable name, the engineers who got it into prod, the engineer who fixed it (and introduced a new bug)
  - throwaway173738 3y ago
    That can actually happen in medical devices, especially if you’re liberal with commentary.
jsemrau 3y ago
That's not fully correct. If you look for example at the case of James Liang who got sentenced to 40 months in prison. O https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/26/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-month-prison-term-in-diesel-case.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/26/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-...
- CommitSyn 3y ago
  That was a fraud scheme.
- usui 3y ago
  Uh, no? The parent was talking about software engineers, whereas this guy was closer to the hard-engineering and construction aspects, and on top of that, he was involved in wire fraud... Huge difference versus just being a smaller actor with no intent to concoct a big scheme.
drewcoo 3y ago
And it will stay that way until there are serious lawsuits because software is killing children.
- idontwantthis 3y ago
  What are you referring to?
mr_toad 3y ago
Construction engineers can tell their boss where to go if they’re asked to do something unsafe or cut corners.
- ekidd 3y ago
  Exactly. In order to make this work, you'd have to license "software engineers", and you'd need to pass laws requiring a signature from a licensed software engineer before shipping certain products. And if a product fails in a significant way, you'd need to either revoke the engineer's license, or impose even more serious punishments. Without appropriate legal structures, the best you can do is say, "No, that's a dangerous idea and I won't do it. You'd have to fire me first." Which I strongly encourage saying when appropriate. But it's not the same as a regulated industry with written best practices. In the absence of more specific regulations, it's usually difficult to "pierce the corporate veil". The corporation itself has liability. The shareholders have limited liability. And sometimes corporate officers have personal liability for certain things. At the same time, I don't think it makes sense to punish a junior programmer for writing buggy software. It's the corporation that should be creating processes which detect and prevent bugs.
  - ehnto 3y ago
    Software would need to converge on some building standards. You can regulate concrete for example, because there is a right way to do it, and it is well known with obvious tests. I think rigorous building standards for certain components of software is possible, and I think we should do it, eg payments. But unlike building, I don't think all software should need to follow standards.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

Man, the crazy future where programmers are punished for bad code. The sheer amount of trails would break our legal system.

mikrl 3y ago
A lawsuit against the author, the intern who +1d the PR, the senior who approved the PR, the engineer who ran the linter, the engineer who changed a variable name, the engineers who got it into prod, the engineer who fixed it (and introduced a new bug)
- throwaway173738 3y ago
  That can actually happen in medical devices, especially if you’re liberal with commentary.

jsemrau 3y ago

That's not fully correct. If you look for example at the case of James Liang who got sentenced to 40 months in prison. O https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/26/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-month-prison-term-in-diesel-case.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/26/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-...

CommitSyn 3y ago
That was a fraud scheme.
usui 3y ago
Uh, no? The parent was talking about software engineers, whereas this guy was closer to the hard-engineering and construction aspects, and on top of that, he was involved in wire fraud... Huge difference versus just being a smaller actor with no intent to concoct a big scheme.

drewcoo 3y ago

And it will stay that way until there are serious lawsuits because software is killing children.

idontwantthis 3y ago
What are you referring to?

mr_toad 3y ago

Construction engineers can tell their boss where to go if they’re asked to do something unsafe or cut corners.

ekidd 3y ago
Exactly. In order to make this work, you'd have to license "software engineers", and you'd need to pass laws requiring a signature from a licensed software engineer before shipping certain products. And if a product fails in a significant way, you'd need to either revoke the engineer's license, or impose even more serious punishments. Without appropriate legal structures, the best you can do is say, "No, that's a dangerous idea and I won't do it. You'd have to fire me first." Which I strongly encourage saying when appropriate. But it's not the same as a regulated industry with written best practices. In the absence of more specific regulations, it's usually difficult to "pierce the corporate veil". The corporation itself has liability. The shareholders have limited liability. And sometimes corporate officers have personal liability for certain things. At the same time, I don't think it makes sense to punish a junior programmer for writing buggy software. It's the corporation that should be creating processes which detect and prevent bugs.
- ehnto 3y ago
  Software would need to converge on some building standards. You can regulate concrete for example, because there is a right way to do it, and it is well known with obvious tests. I think rigorous building standards for certain components of software is possible, and I think we should do it, eg payments. But unlike building, I don't think all software should need to follow standards.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]