You cannot be a profession if you have a hiring manager, a boss who can fire you or no central professional body that can take away your right to program.
Software engineering is not not not a profession. It is a form of literacy. People write down lies and untruths and abominations, using the great gift of literacy.
And society assumes that as everyone else it literate those who write down lies do not automatically have an advantage
We do, but creating a software literacy profession is not the right solution
Edit: let me adjust this.
Professionalism is meant to be about minimum standards of performance expected from any member of the profession (it is a way of saying we the profession ensure you get at least the baseline service no matter who you hire)
The ethics of professionalism are usually well enforced in areas of individual criminal mesbehaviour (i.e. Accountants who dip into their clients accounts get barred)
However the issues discussed here are more areas of regulation than criminality. Yes making software that drives a tesla into a truck is bad, but that was not an actual requirement - it was a failure in the whole industry to decide what is the right thing to do. Different regulators in different industries and countries will let different standards (i.e. With LIdar / without) - and unethical companies can play arbitrage.
Arguing that a spec for a online game fails to meet regulations might work, but individually saying younundersrand the regulations better than the various hierarchies above you is unlikely to work.
So I have lost my trainnof thought but
- TPP is actually supposed to be where regulatory arbitrage is defeated. We need something like it back
- All professions face ethical issues at all levels (I would argue that most issues in software (privacy, self driving cars, armoured robots) are issues we as societies have not decided upon yet so individuals are just applying their own judgement (this is the don't work for a tobacco company question)
- and other professions stuff this up as well - banking did it spectacularly so.
So, yes we should raise the minimum standards but questions of ethics are something for the profession as a whole to decide, (I will not code a self driving car that does not have LIdar out to 100 yards behind, and my professional body will support me, is an ethical stance yes, but really it's a post hoc regulation)
Software engineering is not not not a profession. It is a form of literacy. People write down lies and untruths and abominations, using the great gift of literacy.
And society assumes that as everyone else it literate those who write down lies do not automatically have an advantage
We do, but creating a software literacy profession is not the right solution
Edit: let me adjust this. Professionalism is meant to be about minimum standards of performance expected from any member of the profession (it is a way of saying we the profession ensure you get at least the baseline service no matter who you hire)
The ethics of professionalism are usually well enforced in areas of individual criminal mesbehaviour (i.e. Accountants who dip into their clients accounts get barred)
However the issues discussed here are more areas of regulation than criminality. Yes making software that drives a tesla into a truck is bad, but that was not an actual requirement - it was a failure in the whole industry to decide what is the right thing to do. Different regulators in different industries and countries will let different standards (i.e. With LIdar / without) - and unethical companies can play arbitrage.
Arguing that a spec for a online game fails to meet regulations might work, but individually saying younundersrand the regulations better than the various hierarchies above you is unlikely to work.
So I have lost my trainnof thought but
- TPP is actually supposed to be where regulatory arbitrage is defeated. We need something like it back
- All professions face ethical issues at all levels (I would argue that most issues in software (privacy, self driving cars, armoured robots) are issues we as societies have not decided upon yet so individuals are just applying their own judgement (this is the don't work for a tobacco company question)
- and other professions stuff this up as well - banking did it spectacularly so.
So, yes we should raise the minimum standards but questions of ethics are something for the profession as a whole to decide, (I will not code a self driving car that does not have LIdar out to 100 yards behind, and my professional body will support me, is an ethical stance yes, but really it's a post hoc regulation)