[chapill]

I think healing has less to do with it than liability. Snake oil salesmen used to be a thing.

What currently sets programmers apart is the lack of liability. Programmers write their own get out of jail free cards. We call them EULAs.

If a doctor screws up and leaves a clamp inside you after surgery, he is sued. If a programmer screws up and leaves a debugging backdoor in a shipped product, nothing.

>Can you think of a consistent, concrete set of ethics that would draw unanimous support among programmers?

I think if programmers can't come to a consensus on that answer, then legislators will do it for them.

If you look around, we're actually witnessing this happening right now. Populist anger has erupted after Equifax, Cambridge Analytica, and Uber. NYT opinion pieces call for changes in liability law around programming.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/equifax-accountab...

And it's not just talk. Changes have already started. Section 230 was recently modified to make small changes in liability of web hosts. In response, Craigslist went full nuclear option in protest and dropped their Personals section. Almost nobody noticed, which means in the next round, law makers will be much more bold in applying more liability to the businesses of programmers.

Google's "Do no evil" was the closest thing I think we've witnessed to a Hippocratic oath for programmers. That's long gone now. Now it's all jerk tech, exploit your users for content and then demonetize them with no recourse or redress.

I don't think the west can get any wilder, so the pendulum is going to go against us from here on out. Programmers should be getting ahead of this, but like all dumb humans, we will sit stupidly. We will only react to immediately obvious consequences instead of preparing for the storm on the horizon.