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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

People working on automation systems have a special responsibility, because any small mistakes can be multiplied by the scale the system is used at.

Programming should have a code of ethics.

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> Programming should have a code of ethics.

There is one: https://www.computer.org/education/code-of-ethics

The ACM and IEEE both have codes of ethics. That's a very long way from some silver bullet though.

Without unions the management can pressure you into breaking the code of ethics.

Enron had union workers. Volkswagen has union workers. Boeing has union workers. I'm not sure that unionization is the silver bullet to ward off unethical behavior.

I'm inclined to say that if there's a bug in some grading software and some students kill themselves for failing, the problem here is not with the software.

That’s like saying that if there’s a bug in some missile targeting software and some some students die from playing in the park, the problem is the park that they chose to play in.

No it's not, since playing in a park is normal, but killing yourself for getting bad grades is not.

Working hard for good grades and being disappointed at failure is normal too.

Software design could, probably should, have incorporated the social context of failure. This is Asia, India in particular, that we are talking about here - the hyper-competitiveness that these kids go through is probably worse than what medical doctors go through in prestigious schools in the US.

>Software design should have incorporated the social context of failure.

Yeah sure. My bad. Let's be reasonable:

if(grade < 5)grade = 5

How about if(gradeForStudent(i) < avg(gradesForStudent(i))) flagForReview

Still a one liner.

You seem to have forgot that the software defect was an error in grading.

Wouldn't be the fault of the organization that fired the missile? Especially if they were told ahead of time "This missile's targeting system is only accurate 99.9% of the time so do be careful"

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