Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers

Re:Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Softw... by jrumbut on Sunday August 09, 2020 @11:54PM (#24105351)

I think making a statement as an industry helps avoid some of this stuff even being asked. With research you can easily find doctors who are brought in to assist with torture or other heinous crimes, but in general I would expect it to be harder to find a doctor to help with my project of creating a more addictive cigarette versus finding a web developer to help me market them.

There's some (not a lot, but some) power in a profession just claiming to have ethics, even if there is no enforcement and change in the hearts of practitioners.

Plus, at some point, we all just have to own what we do with our lives. It's great to advocate for systemic change but doing your own small part is at least as important.

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Re:Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Softw... by wolco on Monday August 10, 2020 @12:00AM (#24105394)

You would lose the ability to practise medicine as a license is required.

Do you want to license software developers?

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Re:Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Softw... by kqr on Monday August 10, 2020 @01:52AM (#24105998)

I think the way Uncle Bob said it was reasonable. We have a choice: either we commit to doing good ourselves, and get out of licensing. Or we fuck up repeatedly, and eventually someone else will force a licensing process upon us. And it will not be a pretty one, because it's unlikely the person designing it will know the first thing about how we work.

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Re:Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Softw... by p1necone on Monday August 10, 2020 @12:12AM (#24105482)

I think we should license some software developers - if you're developing software to be used in industries where the people using your software need to be licensed (i.e medical equipment, structural engineering, industrial control systems) then perhaps the software engineers should be similarly rigorously qualified.

But if you're working on video games, or pizza delivery, or really probably like 90% of software then no.

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Re:Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Softw... by tech2 on Tuesday August 11, 2020 @04:37AM (#24118391)

Medical software systems already have legal obligations that fall on (I believe) the CEO of a firm. In the CRO space for clinical trials for example you're often audited by the FDA, MHRA, and others to ensure your processes are documented and followed, your issues traced and corrected, etc. You also have a requirement to fulfil things like 21 CFR Part 11 for records and signatures tracking/management.

Failures of a company responsible for this kind of thing that lead to injuries or deaths can result in imprisonment of (at least) the CEO and possibly others. I'm not sure licensing is necessary here, that's what documented process is supposed to manage (change tracking, development process, etc.)

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