Software developers are being asked to do unethical and illegal things and they need to figure out how to self-regulate and do so quickly.<\/p>\n
This is according to Robert Martin, a programmer and speaker, better known as “Uncle Bob”.<\/p>\n
“Civilisation depends upon\u00a0us. In ways it doesn’t understand. In ways we don’t understand,” said Martin.<\/p>\n
Everything we do today involves software.\u00a0He said\u00a0people have already been killed due to\u00a0faulty software in cars<\/a><\/strong>, while hundreds have died from faulty software during air travel.<\/p>\n “Other people believe they rule the world, but they write down the rules and they hand them to us. And then we write the rules that go into the machines that execute everything that happens.”<\/p>\n Martin said that when\u00a0a fault in software causes tens of thousands of deaths,\u00a0the opportunity to self-regulate will be over. Legislators will take control.<\/p>\n They will dictate\u00a0everything about programmers’ jobs, down to the languages they are allowed to use, he said.<\/p>\n Martin’s talk inspired programmer Bill Sourour to write a post titled\u00a0Code I\u2019m Still Ashamed Of<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Sourour details\u00a0how he was asked to\u00a0build a website for a pharmaceutical company, where he was tricked into helping\u00a0it\u00a0dodge\u00a0drug advertising laws to\u00a0convince\u00a0young women to take a particular drug.<\/p>\n He\u00a0discovered the drug was known to worsen depression and that at least one woman committed suicide while taking it.<\/p>\n He told Business Insider that decades later he still feels guilty about it.<\/p>\n The post went viral on Hacker News<\/a><\/strong> and Reddit<\/a><\/strong>, where other programmers shared\u00a0the unethical and illegal things they have been\u00a0asked to do.<\/p>\nSharing war stories<\/h3>\n