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by edanm
3074 days ago
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"I sometimes wonder if the vulgarity of capitalism forces us to think this way. You don't see lawyers, doctors, or capital-P engineers thinking this way. They have to think about the state of the art and practicing their craft with the utmost attention to detail. Anything less would be unprofessional." That's ridiculous. Of course they think this way. How many doctors are working in a hospital doing the latest surgical technique, versus how many have opened their own office? Do you think opening a private practice means you concentrate more on medicine vs. administration? They do it because it pays more. Thinking programmers are unique in having to balance their profession and business is just plain wrong. It's true that most professionals might not think about it that often, but then again, most programmers don't think this way either. |
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You have to be insured to practice. There's a professional organization that licenses you to practice. These are the social structures we put in place to limit the damage done by the various forces of the world that would tempt a doctor to be anything but faithful to the practice including profit.
A hospital may ask a doctor it hired to "cut corners," but the doctor should refuse and if the hospital tries to fire them and get away with it anyway... the hospital should pay for that.
What I meant by the last line of my comment is that we have a vested interest in producing more software, not less, and I don't think cost is the problem. Although there are people with a vested interest in the status quo who would see the expense of insured, professional software engineers as being unbearable to their interests... not necessarily because such practices would harm the public good and their reliance on technology.