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[On the morality of programmers] [UK Census]

UK Census

April 29, 2001

To the careful reader, questionnaires always reveal something about the people who draw them up, and how they see the world - or how they want to see the world. In Britain, we have a census every ten years - with a shifting set of questions. This year's set has been controversial, mainly because of the increasingly absurd attempts to accurately pin down social class. It's also worrying when you realise that Government policy for the next ten years will be based on the answers.

For example, they ask whether, over the past twelve months, my health has been good, fairly good or not good. That's the only question about health. Obviously I need to think pretty carefully about my answer to this one, as it will influence the amount of money set aside by the Government for the health of people in my demographic category - whichever this is.

The form is designed for a household of up to five people - a couple with four children or with live-in grandparents must request an additional form. Am I alone in detecting a scent of bureauratic disapproval here, as if there's something abnormal, or even pathological about large or extended families?

The form is also designed to produce a low figure for unemployment. If you're working, you can't be looking for work (This ignores the reality of many service industries, including consultancy, where looking for work is itself work.) Lots of people with flexible or part-time working arrangements. or studying part-time, are effectively made invisible by questions that divide the world into Employed and Unemployed.

Postscript: When I was posting my census form, I got into conversation with an Asian man who was posting his. While I was complaining about the form's subtle hostility towards large households, he complained about the converse hostility towards old people living alone - who might find a form intended for up to five people intimidatingly long. Obviously it works both ways.

The morality of programmers

April 23, 2001

Lawrence sends me an ancient quote. "It would be immoral for programmers to automate everybody but themselves." M.D. McIlroy, "Mass produced software components", Report NATO conference on Software Engineering, October 1968.

Lawrence asks how come over 30 years later there is probably a greater proportion of handcrafted code produced today than ever.

Of course, describing today's programming practices as handcrafting is a bit of an exaggeration. Nobody touches the code with their hands any more - they watch it through a glass screen. There are lots of tools available to the programmer - so there is some degree of automation. But the job of the programmer certainly hasn't been automated out of existence.

For that matter, not that many jobs have been completely automated out of existence - at least not by software. But lots of jobs have been transformed, and not all for the better.

Which leads to the moral point. Are programmers ever driven by a sense of morality? Clearly some individual programmers have very robust ethics and strong moral principles - but programmers as a class are not known for their moral sense. So is it surprising if programmers have failed to do the moral thing?

Which leads to the political point. NATO may deserve respect for having championed software engineering, but is NATO an appropriate authority to set ethical groundrules for software engineers? Is NATO right to characterize programmers' failure to automate themselves as a moral failing?

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