We are programmers

Translation of Robert Martin's article " We Programmers ", in which he discusses the importance of programmers in the modern world.

Good

A small red sports car goes to the asteroid belt, and we programmers sent it there. Oh, I did not mean the reduction of the merits of Ilon Musk, rocket scientists and SpaceX engineers. This is their vision and achievement. But they would not have achieved this without us.

Think for a moment about all the software involved in this project. Think about automation in the spacecraft itself. Think about the ability of accelerators to land in tandem. Think of the steering racks, engine shafts and throttles. About ground control, communication protocols, ...

Think about how engineers work. Think about CAD / CAM software. Think of network computers and 3D modeling software. Think about fluid dynamics simulation, finite element analysis, orbital calculations, spreadsheets, word processors, email, text messages, calls ...

I think that you already understood what I am leading to. Every step on the way from dream to realization was minutely blurred, lightened, expanded and simplified using software. Billions and billions of lines of software that were written by us programmers . [Yes, Saganism was deliberate.]

Now think about what this means for our civilization. Yes, it was a sign - a gesture - no more than a drop in the sea of ​​potentials. But what a drop. Think of absolute impertinence, colossal, arrogant, violent, joyful extravagance. It was a peacock spreading its luxurious tail feathers. It was the pronghorn antelope leaping from pure enthusiasm. This was an expression of our rejection of restrictions, and our willingness to easily expend enormous resources to achieve a small part of a passionate dream.

It was a message that we sent to ourselves and to the Universe entirely, declaring that we will come and nothing in the Universe will stop us.

And it was we who programmers put more into sending this message than anyone else. This is why both me and you and all programmers in the world should feel very good.

poorly

Elaine Herzberg is dead. She was hit by a self-driving car when she crossed the road with a bicycle. And we programmers killed her. Oh, I do not want to say that one of the programmers maliciously or carelessly wrote the code that killed her. But make no mistake in this, what killed her was the code.

Perhaps in this code there is an IF statement, which, if the Boolean predicate were in the opposite state, would prevent a collision. Or perhaps it was a function that spawned a number, which, if it were different a few bits, would prevent a collision.

We can never define this IF statement or function. Machine learning of neural networks is insidious and difficult to understand. Even if the car's log files contain all the input data and we can repeat this event again and again, we may never understand why the car behaved like this in a whirlpool of weights, averages and feedback loops.

But we can say that we are the programmers who wrote the code that killed it. And therefore, I, and you, and all programmers in the world, must feel very bad.

Ugly

Among programmers, there is an opinion that the arguments of ethics and morality should not play a role in our discussions about knowledge and experience.

Those who hold this view say that our knowledge and experience should be a matter of pure logic and economics. Given the two scenarios above, I find this alarming. It seems to me that ethics and morality have become an integral part of everything that we programmers do; because a lot depends on the quality of our work.

Our motto

It's good that the time has passed when we programmers could protect and isolate themselves from the outside world. We are programmers , we no longer need to hide in our small technical bubbles from the code that we programmers write. The code that we write is important for the hopes and dreams of our society and civilization. It is important for people to ride bicycles and cross streets with or without them. This is important for everyone, because the code that we write to programmers lubricates, facilitates, improves and simplifies almost every aspect of everyday life. In everything, from something small, like a young mother checking the monitor of her child, to such large-scale things as international policy in the field of nuclear weapons and interplanetary travel, our code matters .

Recently, Grady Booch (Grady Booch) tweeted what I think we should adopt as our motto:

Each line of code represents an ethical and moral decision.