The one sure way to advance software engineering

Re:The one sure way to advance software engineering by gabrielroth on Friday August 21, 2009 @04:08PM (#778348)

I was right there with him until the words 'pass a law'. I'm hardly a libertarian, but it seems pretty clear even to me that any such law would (1) raise serious and legitimate privacy concerns, and (2) be rife with unintended consequences.

I could imagine such a law applying only to software projects funded with public money, though. There are enough of those to advance the state of knowledge a fair amount....

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Re:The one sure way to advance software engineering by PotatoEngineer on Friday August 21, 2009 @04:29PM (#778390)

The tricky bit is that once you have a law in place for public projects, the people who pushed for that first law will probably try to extend it into the private sector. So even having that first law (which is a good one!) paves the way for more invasive laws later.

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Re:The one sure way to advance software engineering by timwiseman on Friday August 21, 2009 @04:44PM (#778420)

It does provide something of a "slippery slope" problem, but there are ways of handling that.

One step in a direction does not always lead to the next, especially if there are definite plans at the beginning to avoid it.

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Re:The one sure way to advance software engineering by gloob on Friday August 21, 2009 @06:52PM (#778666)

One step in a direction does not always lead to the next

Perhaps, but choreographing 50 million people (plus or minus an arbitrary number, depending on your country) is pretty tough, even on a good day.

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Re:The one sure way to advance software engineering by timwiseman on Tuesday August 25, 2009 @12:00PM (#785087)

True, and quite well phrased.

Still, there are ways of dealing with slippery slopes. Knowing that something is a slippery slope means "approach with caution" not "stop".

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