Sloan Roadmaster
samir, an unknown quantityHow many professional programmers are working on pointless and/or actively harmful products?
Give me your best guess.
(If you vote, please boost to diversify the results. It’s polite.)
0–25%
25–50%
50–75%
75–100%
Poll ended at .
brennen@samir questions like this get a lot easier to answer once one has concluded that software is fundamentally a harmful activity.
Asnabel@Asnabel did i stutter? :)
Edward Kennedy
kosure@ekennedy80 To be fair, there's no such thing as ethical software under capitalism. 😉
@kosure moral software development? Def no! Ethical software development? Absolutely! In my opinion, it all depends on the culture of the company/team/project you’re working with/on.
@brennen you are literally using one right now?
@Asnabel more than one, even.
@brennen so you're willingly being evil?
@Asnabel on the one hand, to a first approximation no humans have much choice about engaging with software, so i'd say no it's more like i'm trapped in a matrix of evil by forces vastly beyond my control.
on the other hand, it's actually much worse than that: i work on software _for making software_ for a living, so really i'm deeply entangled in the operating machinery of said matrix and too constrained by my own past choices and fundamental cowardice to extricate myself in any meaningful way.
Wilfried Klaebe@wonka i dunno in my case all it took was decades of experience with software.
Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸@samir judging by the job openings I see, I'd say around half of products in IT are very, very harmful, and out of the second half, 90% range from mostly pointless to somewhat/indirectly harmful.
Meanwhile I'm a professional programmer
Meanwhile I'm a professional programmer
Marquis de Geek@samir but which is it? I do 100% pointless, and 0% harmful!
Jeremy Wadhams@samir I imagine if your definition of "pointless" expands to include "ripoffs of things that already exist" the number approaches 90%. I myself spent years writing "Instagram for beauticians" because the venture capitalists were willing to ignore "but why wouldn't the beauticians just use the Instagram they have at home?"
Gerbrand van Dieyen@jeremywadhams @samir a lot of programming is creating something which already exists just in a slightly different combination. That doesn't make it pointless. If only, gaining understanding is already extremely useful, often reinventing is the only way to get understanding
@gerbrand Oh absolutely, I wouldn't discourage a developer from reimplementing tic-tac-toe or building a blog CMS. And I wouldn't stop someone whose vision of a better mousetrap was 95% conventional thinking, but that 5% novelty is a banger! But it's discouraging how many meetings I've been in that are "competitor X has feature Y, we need a shallow clone of Y bodged into our product immediately!"
@jeremywadhams one thing I had to learn to the hard way as junior software developer is that there's nothing wrong with programming something that may or may not already exist. Whether cms, lms, user management, caching, webshop, dao or any other kind of functionality
@jeremywadhams product management through copying features from competitors might not always be the path to success, indeed
levampyre@samir My guess is that about 99% of professional devs work on either pointless or actively harmful stuff. But my definition of 'pointless' is wide. Anything that serves capitalist goals, i.e. exists for the purpose of profitability or financial growths is pointless in my view. Most of the not pointless stuff is developed by volunteers, i.e. unpaid devs or scientists, who need software for doing their science, but who are not software engineers by profession.
Zorro Notorious MEB 😡@samir 0 - 25%. Anyone who thinks it's higher has succumbed to propaganda.
AmgineA key qualification was the word "professional".
In most places 'programmers' are not members of a professional association with codes of conduct/ethics, nor are there standards of education/training, nor licensure or bond.
Which ultimately means the professionals do not know they can refuse unethical/immoral work requirements, nor have they organized to enforce their rights.
Unfortunately, software engineering is more akin to building trades than PE: the area of its applied sciences is very large, not well-defined, and entails a myriad of sub-specialization.
That does not mean, like trades or finance, they cannot form guilds and unions to build standards and enforce regulations and ethics. It just means PE will not accept them into the fold.
William Pietri@amgine I think one of our errors is to treat "software engineering" as a unified thing. Some of it is (or should be) actual engineering. Some is like the trades. A bunch is handwritten-handyman-ad-on-a-telephone pole work. That a bunch of people from the last skill category think they can work on life-critical stuff is deranged.
@Warlockofwires @samir
@Warlockofwires @samir
@williampietri @Warlockofwires @samir
Excellent, excellent, point.
One can draw two lines, describing three loose 'divisions':
logic which works with hardware directly.
logic which works within an Operating System.
But setting up a SE association must be a benefit to industry and community. History suggests professional associations (PAs) are most likely when they reduce corporate liability when government increases corporate liability.
1/2
PAs know the rules, enforce them, and advocate for changes with governing bodies. Members at a Co. will reduce that company's risk of fine/lawsuit. Their involvement with gov't will improve specificity and sensitivity of rules.
To get there, devs need to talk about ethics, & what rules should be in place to not harm people/communities/world. We and government need to know this.
We need to know existing rules, and inform each other about them. This is a duty, not just a good..
finis.
liber@samir
Conflating pointless and harmful? Yeah, no vote.
Also, "pointless" is so damn subjective. Prima facie, everything I'm not using and I'm not interacting with in any way would be pointless. But that would raise the "pointless" percentage to 99.999...%, and also, the world doesn't revolve around one individual.
Then again, excluding ANYTHING that at least SOMEONE uses would drop it to basically 0.
IMHO, this applies perfectly:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4173-there-are-three-types-of-lies----lies-damn-lies
@liber Right, this is not a measure of whether the software is valuable, but a measure of how a (biased, mostly left-leaning, nerdy) group values the software.
betalars 
@home@liber
People want to do jobs that have a positive (non-harmful) impact (non-pointless). This is likely why those thighs are mentioned in the same post.
Also: pointless is a subjective term ... I can find stuff pointless that other people enjoy. But I feel like you're trying to distract from the point and I don't know it's arguing about that has a point.
@betalars
My point is that something pointless (with no positive impact, if you like) is not actively harmful (as per the original post).
Developing another office suite, or another ERP, that's doomed to fail, should never, even for the sake of online opinion pools, be placed on the same level with this piece of "human ingenuity", for example:
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1218643254/israel-is-using-an-ai-system-to-find-targets-in-gaza-experts-say-its-just-the-st
It's unfair to those stuck in the former scenario, and it trivializes the latter.
Maybe I'm wrong.
My point is that something pointless (with no positive impact, if you like) is not actively harmful (as per the original post).
Developing another office suite, or another ERP, that's doomed to fail, should never, even for the sake of online opinion pools, be placed on the same level with this piece of "human ingenuity", for example:
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1218643254/israel-is-using-an-ai-system-to-find-targets-in-gaza-experts-say-its-just-the-st
It's unfair to those stuck in the former scenario, and it trivializes the latter.
Maybe I'm wrong.
@liber When I say I don't like encountering muddy paths and bears when biking trough the woods I am not saying those things are equally bad.
pointless is having no impact. People don't like that.
Pointless is without a doubt less bad than harmful.
But as people look for jobs that do a meaningful good, they want to avoid stuff that's either pointless or harmful.
Hazardius 🡗🡗🡗 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@samir I like to feel that I'm somewhat positive about this.
Hisham@samir the number skews way downwards once one realizes that the vast majority of programmers are not only not in Silicon Valley, but really not in tech companies.
So many programmers all around the world working in local systems to help drive local businesses of all sizes and local governments.
The "tech industry" that is overrepresented in English-speaking social media is only a part of what programming as a global activity really is, even if they hold great power over that whole.
Neil Kandalgaonkar@hisham_hm @samir Yeah, that’s what I thought, but also remember that many of the “regular” jobs are choked with bureaucracy and corporate fiefdoms, and there are a fair number of industries which are fundamentally unethical.
And startuppy faangy jobs can be dystopian too, but there are considerable concessions to workers and the mission has to be at least nominally inspiring to attract talent
I’m honestly not sure what’s worse
derptron@samir Those feeling that way should look at medical programming. It can be damn tedious sometimes but at least what I'm working on right now is trying to help people who are disabled. Feels great to be working on that rather than fleecing lonely, rich old ladies out of their money (slot machines on ipads--play is with virtual money but you buy it with the real thing and they were making MILLIONS from rich old ladies).
🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦
Orjan@samir My perspective is skewed by having mostly worked on embedded systems the last 30 years. Things like roadside weather monitoring, cell culture growth and analysis systems for medical research, and printers for date markings on eggs. I'm used to working on things that by and large are both useful and arguably beneficial.
On the other hand, I did spend a couple of years working for a bank before going back to the embedded world...
On the other hand, I did spend a couple of years working for a bank before going back to the embedded world...
@samir can you give me some examples of ‘actively harmful products”?
Kibrika@ekennedy80 @samir I guess the "active" is debetable, but anything in te gambling industry. The technologies that eat a lot of resources for not much benefit to humanity like blockchain farming and the llms seem like they could be counted. Phishing sites.
maple maple maple maple maple maple maple@samir never in my career have i worked on something i could stand by ethically on its own merits. now, the fact that it cost the company more to pay me to make it than it will ever bring them income or savings... thats praxis but still overall useless
Francis Mangion (M)
Dym Sohin@samir pointlessness and harmfulness changes over time of a project, so those percentages are slightly meaningless
Json Doh@samir
It is known that in the software industry about 80% of work goes to trash, so essentially pointless. But one can't know which until they try.
It is known that in the software industry about 80% of work goes to trash, so essentially pointless. But one can't know which until they try.
utopiArte@samir Actually everyone who is coding for non free open source software.
That's probably like 99%.
Considering work as synonym for paid labor, it would be actually very interesting to know how many are coding free software in their spare time.
@samir I’m a little optimistic on this front, actually. I think grifts like AI and crypto get disproportionate attention, but I think an awful lot of developers are just keeping the lights on at boring, normal, non-tech companies.
Daniel McLaury@swieton But how many "boring, normal, non-tech companies" do something that is actively beneficial to society? Like maintaining the accounts receivable system for the company that makes Wonderbread is probably not a net positive for humanity.
BiggestBulb 💡🏳️🌈🧑💻@samir as a programmer, I would say 50-75%. Most programmers I know are either clinging to FAANG jobs for the life of them (which are, obviously, evil - I long for the days of "don't be evil") or they are in some random startup creating a super shitty, niche product that has no possibility for a future. Most of the second category is caused by middle managers fundamentally not knowing what is right from a product point of view, but doing shit anyway.
@samir I'll also add that very, very few repos I have seen have any form of meaningful testing or QA (let alone timesavers like Hygen). Seeing a solid ESLint setup with jax-a11y is like finding a treasure chest in a Kmart parking lot - fucking impossible these days.
Mike J👹🐀 🤘🏻@samir Most professional programmers are making sure the accounting system continues to work and other similarly mundane things. Not pointless, just not exciting.
Roger Moore@samir
I suspect the majority of professional programmers are doing something tedious and uninteresting that basically amounts to "convert company business logic into code".
I suspect the majority of professional programmers are doing something tedious and uninteresting that basically amounts to "convert company business logic into code".
Haelwenn /элвэн/ 
@samir I'd say 80~90% specially due to the pointless part.
Jérôme CarreteroYou could formulate the question otherwise, like if you are writing software, on a scale of 1 to 4, how pointless or harmful is it? And define pointless... like, #libcaca is uber-pointless but probably not harmful, compared to a video game, casino software, social media, emissions-cheating firmware, autonomous weapons?
A good fraction of those jobs were mine.