You know, it's funny, because as a programmer and watching this interaction happen over the years (between programmers and people that are good at cryptography/

You know, it's funny, because as a programmer and watching this interaction happen over the years (between programmers and people that are good at cryptography/security) I've come to this conclusion: It's down to the fact that developers are not engineers. In the sense that anyone can "sling" some code together and call it an application; but that isn't engineering. Cryptographers have a similar set of moral and ethical imperatives that medical doctors, civil engineers, or even aerospace engineers (may) have. If the guy down the street that's read a few books and built a few tree houses (or maybe even something more complex and impressive) goes to build a bridge intended to be used by anyone; any sane civil engineer would have every right to trash on him. I don't entirely understand the mushy "be nice to him, he's learning" attitude everyone has (that's what school and learning environments are for!!!) because it's precisely that personal attitude that has resulted in the loss of credit card data, sensitive passwords stored in big services, secrets that people would (literally) kill for, &c... This shit isn't a joke and I fully support any cryptographer being a hard-ass because they are the ones that put in the time to learn, practice, fuck up, and re-learn what it means to encrypt something. As programmers we don't even have a code of conduct, or ethical pact. Cryptographers have one but, they do, not because they all sat down and decided they should but because it's a natural consequence of what it is they are working on. As a cryptographer you cannot morally support an incompetent (and even a competent) programmer in rolling their own crypto; not because they are all assholes, but because they believe in privacy to a degree the rest of us don't.