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This is exactly the problem: Software developers are not a professional class, we are hired goons with no professional organization nor a code of professional e

This is exactly the problem: Software developers are not a professional class, we are hired goons with no professional organization nor a code of professional ethics. This is one of my personal bugbears. I keep making this point on HN but devs want to LARP as professionals so they usually don't want to hear that they have more in common with retail workers than they do with carpenters, engineers, or accountants. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47625159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47625159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48932441

datsci_est_2015 6d ago
Maybe AI will provide an impetus for change. One can only hope. I’d be willing to pay a few hundred dollars a year to be a part of a professional organization that maintains ethics requirements at this point.
mikestew 6d ago
Yeah, and read the responses to your comments: "but, but, 'professional' is a state of mind, not just a piece of paper" and some crap, completely missing the point. Professionals push back with "I'll lose my license/certification/disbarred". Software developers push back with "yes, sir, how high, sir?" or "I quit".
votingisntreal 6d ago
> have more in common with retail workers They did this to automotive. It was once a respected technology, and being a mechanic or factory worker was a high-paying job. Now you have Jiffy Lube and some pimply kid in a polo! Polofication Has come for many industries... And if retail was done the same way as it was 20 years ago, some kid in a polo shirt at Office Depot would be making small business websites using ChatGPT with a 1-hour turn-around time. Pay at the register, with your printer paper. But Idk, I don't actually agree with you... I think "software engineering" is such a spectrum now, a wide field of its own, that you can have deep research roles, high art, fashion, accounting, and executive-level work that involve it (which may have nothing to do with "consumer web design") that it's hard to make that blanket statement. For example, the software engineer working on the computer in a Tesla, or the software on the displays in the BART train, or the banking infrastructure for Bank of America, is a lot more like a "real engineer" than the developer putting a marketing site on Vercel, or an iOS game on the App Store (each of which is vastly different work in their own right). Everything is software now, every engineer is a software engineer now to some degree.
- ForHackernews 6d ago
  Nothing that you say is responsive to my point. None of your so-called engineers at Tesla has ever said, "I'm sorry Mr. Musk, we won't deploy those features because it's against the Software Engineering Code to do beta-testing on live vehicles where it harms users and endangers members of the public. You can fire us, but you'll get the same answer from the next engineer you call into this office."
  - pfdietz 6d ago
    But one might also ask: is it actually bad to do beta testing on live vehicles? Self-driving cars might globally save many millions of lives. Consideration of statistical lives leads to counterintuitive consequences.
    - ForHackernews 6d ago
      Absolutely, and real professions with real professional ethical standards have considered such questions[0] and taken informed positions on them. Nothing of the kind exists for programmers. [0] https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/ama-code-medical-ethics-opinions-clinical-research/2015-12 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/ama-code-medica...

datsci_est_2015 6d ago

Maybe AI will provide an impetus for change. One can only hope. I’d be willing to pay a few hundred dollars a year to be a part of a professional organization that maintains ethics requirements at this point.

mikestew 6d ago

Yeah, and read the responses to your comments: "but, but, 'professional' is a state of mind, not just a piece of paper" and some crap, completely missing the point. Professionals push back with "I'll lose my license/certification/disbarred". Software developers push back with "yes, sir, how high, sir?" or "I quit".

votingisntreal 6d ago

> have more in common with retail workers They did this to automotive. It was once a respected technology, and being a mechanic or factory worker was a high-paying job. Now you have Jiffy Lube and some pimply kid in a polo! Polofication Has come for many industries... And if retail was done the same way as it was 20 years ago, some kid in a polo shirt at Office Depot would be making small business websites using ChatGPT with a 1-hour turn-around time. Pay at the register, with your printer paper. But Idk, I don't actually agree with you... I think "software engineering" is such a spectrum now, a wide field of its own, that you can have deep research roles, high art, fashion, accounting, and executive-level work that involve it (which may have nothing to do with "consumer web design") that it's hard to make that blanket statement. For example, the software engineer working on the computer in a Tesla, or the software on the displays in the BART train, or the banking infrastructure for Bank of America, is a lot more like a "real engineer" than the developer putting a marketing site on Vercel, or an iOS game on the App Store (each of which is vastly different work in their own right). Everything is software now, every engineer is a software engineer now to some degree.

ForHackernews 6d ago
Nothing that you say is responsive to my point. None of your so-called engineers at Tesla has ever said, "I'm sorry Mr. Musk, we won't deploy those features because it's against the Software Engineering Code to do beta-testing on live vehicles where it harms users and endangers members of the public. You can fire us, but you'll get the same answer from the next engineer you call into this office."
- pfdietz 6d ago
  But one might also ask: is it actually bad to do beta testing on live vehicles? Self-driving cars might globally save many millions of lives. Consideration of statistical lives leads to counterintuitive consequences.
  - ForHackernews 6d ago
    Absolutely, and real professions with real professional ethical standards have considered such questions[0] and taken informed positions on them. Nothing of the kind exists for programmers. [0] https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/ama-code-medical-ethics-opinions-clinical-research/2015-12 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/ama-code-medica...