> "But what developers really need is an organization that governs and regulates their profession like other industries have, both Martin and Sourour believe. Currently nothing like that exists although both the Association for Computer Machinery and the IEEE have made a start, with ethics documents and, in some cases, training."
I don't think the solution for this is to have an organization that regulates programmers to make sure a programmer will become ethical. No matter how much ethics you teach someone to become ethical, it is in their own volition to act upon a task that is provided.
What will you do it if a programmer suddenly decides to be unethical or agreed upon doing an unethical task related to work? Remove their license to become programmers? Ban them to use the computers? Put them in jail? Shouldn't the management be responsible for their decisions, too? Why are all the blame here being focus on the programmers? Why don't you teach "Ethics" to those who are pushing the programmers to do such a task? Yes, the programmers have the big decision to do it or not. But regulating them isn't the solution that would make their decisions ethical.
What if the younger generation wanted to code? Will you stop them from learning it because they are not allowed to learn it unless they are in school? Or they are not even allowed to ship code because they don't have a license or it is not under the standards made by the organization?
Remember programmers are people. Same with all the human beings in this world who makes moral decisions on their own. Their beliefs, attitude and principles in life are nurtured based on how they were brought up not because they took an ethics class in College.
If a programmer violated a law because of his actions, then treat them as a person who has violated the law.
I don't think the solution for this is to have an organization that regulates programmers to make sure a programmer will become ethical. No matter how much ethics you teach someone to become ethical, it is in their own volition to act upon a task that is provided.
What will you do it if a programmer suddenly decides to be unethical or agreed upon doing an unethical task related to work? Remove their license to become programmers? Ban them to use the computers? Put them in jail? Shouldn't the management be responsible for their decisions, too? Why are all the blame here being focus on the programmers? Why don't you teach "Ethics" to those who are pushing the programmers to do such a task? Yes, the programmers have the big decision to do it or not. But regulating them isn't the solution that would make their decisions ethical.
What if the younger generation wanted to code? Will you stop them from learning it because they are not allowed to learn it unless they are in school? Or they are not even allowed to ship code because they don't have a license or it is not under the standards made by the organization?
Remember programmers are people. Same with all the human beings in this world who makes moral decisions on their own. Their beliefs, attitude and principles in life are nurtured based on how they were brought up not because they took an ethics class in College.
If a programmer violated a law because of his actions, then treat them as a person who has violated the law.