How many professional programmers are working on pointless and/or actively harmful products?

Give me your best guess.

(If you vote, please boost to diversify the results. It’s polite.)

@levampyre @samir

I’m genuinely just curious: can we not assume some of those scientists doing software development could also be acting harmfully or pointlessly?

@james yeah but the argument was about non pointless software development, not science in general.

And a lot of the software development that is not pointless happens in science.

@james No, I agree, we absolutely can. All this weapon and war technology is developed at subsidized programmes in universities to just name one area of actively harmful.

But I also think that there is some genuinely good science being done of software developed, that is actually helping humanity or the planet (weather forecasts, climate data analytics, etc). It's just by no means the majority. Or often times the very same tech can be used for good and evil and it's an ethical dilemma.

@samir

@james @levampyre @samir I think you might have accidentally read "most of the non-pointless software is being made by ... scientists" as "most of the scientists developing software are making non-pointless software," but I don't think that was ever said. Like if someone said most NASA engineers are neurodivergent, it wouldn't mean most neurodivergent people are NASA engineers
But like I get it, I switch things like that all the time

@raphaelmorgan @levampyre @samir

I didn’t, no.

I was simply wondering how levampyre could come to the conclusion that of the non-pointless software out there, is mostly made by scientists and the like. And not generic non-scientist developers.

I did not think the suggestion was that most scientists make non-pointless software.

Whilst I understand you were trying to be helpful, it’s really uncomfortable to be told by someone else what I was thinking and have it framed in this way.

Perhaps it was my wording that I fucked up, but I’d appreciate requests to explain rather than being told I did wrong.

@raphaelmorgan I might have written that in an unusual way. I'm not native in English and tend to use German structures for nested sentences a lot. Which understandably confuses natives. But you explained correctly what I meant.
@james @samir

@levampyre @raphaelmorgan @samir

That is indeed what I read, you did not write in an unusual way.

Evidently, I did, if everyone is misunderstanding me. I apologise.

@james Oh, scientists amongst others, because people, who are neither developers, nor scientists in some way, have a personal need to write a lot of software. It's an assumption, true. Convince me otherwise. I'm open to learning.

@raphaelmorgan @samir

@james sorry for causing you discomfort. I have a tendency to try and clear up misunderstandings because that's what I would want in the situation, but I'm reminded I can't assume others think like me even if I relate to a lot of the things they say. I'll make a note not to do that to you in the future.
And thank you for explaining what you were saying, because evidently I was confused 😅

@raphaelmorgan

I definitely understand, and can and do the same, hashtag James has autism.

in my specific instance I didn’t misunderstand at all which is where the upset comes from. I’m someone who struggles to be understood a lot and it’s quite a challenge for me as an autistic person, so when someone tells me I am communicating or interpreting wrong, I believe them. But then I saw that no, I didn’t have a wrong interpretation.

As I said, it’d be better to frame it as questions. Like tell me you don’t understand, could I re explain? Not tell me I don’t understand.

@levampyre @raphaelmorgan @samir

I don’t want to convince you, I just wanted to learn more about what you thought and why :)

Like, “this is interesting, but I don’t know how they reached this conclusion, I would like to learn more about their experiences, perhaps they have worked in both of these fields and saw a trend?”.

That’s it :)

Anyway, I’ll wish you all a nice day

@james Ah, yeah, I've indeed worked in both of these fields and saw trends. Not science directly, but humanities/academia and some scientist friends. So there's where that assumption comes from.

@raphaelmorgan @samir

@betalars and I was wanting to talk about scientists doing software development, not scientists in general. I do not know how we can conclude that most scientists are acting good™️, so I am genuinely curious if we can and if so, how. I’ll edit my post as I did not make this clear, thank you.

@james ah okay.

In that sense: I think some scientists will probably claim moral neutrality and I would disagree with that.

Because while I think the scientific process can be described as morally neutral or positive depending on your world view, the question of what is being researched is a highly moral one.

Besides that there's without a doubt scientists acting in bad faith too ... although I feel like science is less lucrative and less vulnerable compared to other fields.