Ask HN: Should there be a Hippocratic oath for Programmers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should there be a Hippocratic oath for Programmers?

17 pointsmartingoodson11 comments

In the light of Prism, would it be useful for programmers to be able to publically swear an ethical oath? For instance, that they would blow the whistle on, or refuse to create, anything that they have reason to think will be used for a massive infringement on individual liberty.

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So logically we have a function:

  f(oath)-->Binding

Such that

  f(privacyOath)-->privacyOathBinding

And

  f(loyaltyOath)-->loyaltyOathBinding

Maybe I am just not sold on the whole oath thing. Doctors are regulated not by oaths but through licensure. Licensing of computer programmers is a possible future state of affairs with more likelihood than might currently be obvious without looking at historical precedent - e.g. local governments often license all businesses, other professions become licensed as they mature, and as PRISM shows, governments have an interest in the products of programming. The future may inherit more from North Korea than we wish to consider.

Engineers generally already have such things.

I don't think "programmer" is a well-defined enough concept to be associated with an oath. You can't go around calling yourself a Medical Doctor or an Engineer if you aren't, but pretty much anybody who codes at all can reasonably call themselves a programmer.

Even with all that aside, such oaths only really work for things like causing blatant harm. Unqualified "freedom" and "liberty" (especially in the USA) are so nebulous they mean almost nothing at all. The overwhelming majority of programmers work for organisations whose goals (e.g. profit, power) are not - and are often directly opposed to - "freedom" by any reasonable definition.

In short, I don't think the answer to your question is "no, there shouldn't" so much as "no, there couldn't".

Professional organizations and codes of professional standards (including ethical standards, standards for continuing education, etc.) may be valuable.

An analog to the Hippocratic oath (an oath which is not taken generally in any consistent form [1], which has no binding force, and the form of which that is administered is generally maintained and decided on by individual educational institutions rather than the practicing community), probably not useful.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Modern_use_and...

"an ethical oath"??? I don't think there is such a thing. What may appear unethical to you may seem ethical to another.

Everybody will find justification for their actions as unethical as they may seem to you.

Well, true, but many other professions have an oath of their own. Often times the language covered in that oath is supervised by a committee.

Obviously, there are problems with this. But the point that Martin makes is a really good one. Technology is going to dictate a vast majority of our lives going forward, and programmers are the ones that literally make that technology. A lot like a surgeon operating on a person, a programmer can be neglectful or overly intrusive.

I think an oath is a great idea, actually.

Given the evident political power granted by technology, I can see (a somewhat sinister) argument for restricting access to technical knowledge and capabilities. Perhaps a government license required to use a compiler or interpreter? A professional body to restrict access to the profession and bump up salaries for programmers? (And also control them at the same time). Programmers would become a lot like lawyers - privileged, but essentially trapped and under the control of the state (similar personality types & skill-sets required anyway).

With how connected we are and how empowered developers and programmers are today. I see many reasons that point to yes.

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has had a Code of Ethics for a long time. http://www.computer.org/portal/web/certification/resources/c...

Doctors take the oath generally upon graduation from medical school. There isn't any regulatory body - unless you make it mandatory to pay EFF dues there is no body to regulate the oath-taking.

you don't need an oath for that, being a decent human being already covers it.

There's one on GitHub - google Turing oath for programmers

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