The industry of Software Engineering is getting bigger and bigger each day, all around the world programmers are getting filled of new ideas and attempt to give something innovative to people. With such a large community like this, keeping a good relationship between coders and society is really important. So, we all agree that it wasn’t a bad idea (actually, it was pretty good) to create a Code of Ethics for software engineers.
The Code of Ethics was developed by the ACM and the Computer Society with the purpose of instructing programmers about what the society expects from them. But if we’re going to talk about ethics, first we must know the definition on ethics, right? Well, ethics is «an area of study that deals with ideas about what is good and bad behavior».
We believe that every mature person has an idea of what’s good and bad; so why do we need our own code of ethics? The ACM explains it to us in 8 principles:
- PUBLIC: Software engineers must act with the public interest. Our creations must contribute to the society, help people with their problems and for that, we need to have in consideration as many cases and scenarios as possible.
- CLIENT AND EMPLOYER: The relevance in this principle is confidentiality. As professionals, to do our job we will have to use other people’s information and it’s important to keep it in private and to show no interest. But what if we notice something extremely illegal? Doesn’t matter how much they’ll pay you, ethically, the right thing to do is to say «no».
- JUDGEMENT: Programmers have to mantain integrity and independence in every situation. We must respect the human rights and evaluate circumstances with moral judgements.
- PRODUCT: It’s very important to give people good quality software, it has to follow all the specifications and be safe; if it’s functional, good for you, but it’s not enough. Also, we must provide users with documentation so they can understand and use the product.
- MANAGEMENT: We shall no forget that planning and managing our projects is just as important as the developing part. To consder the costs, the potential users and the outcomes.
- PROFESSION: Professionals must work in collaboration with each other and act according to this Code of Ethics. Our creations speaks for ourselves, so we have to speak correctly.
- COLLEAGUES: Team Work is the best way to make a good product. Listening to different opinions, ideas and perspectives will help us to improve. Also, it’s important to give credit to other people’s work.
- SELF: We need to try to improve all the time, in every aspect of our lives and careers.
Hopefully, this Code will help us to have a better idea of how to be a good software engineer. All these principles are very relevant, but we think the fist one is the most important. The purpose of this career is to give something good to people, sometimes we’ll feel proud of our creations, other times not that much; but we must have in consideration that everything we create will cause a reaction in people. What kind of reactions do you want to cause? The answer is up to you.
In collaboration with:
Victor Najar
Michelle Sagnelli
Ramón García
Juan Pablo Ramírez
Julia's Blog 