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When I co-oped during college, I had to fill out an evaluation of the co-op afterwards. One metric I always had to rate was how much the company required me to "Make ethical decisions related to your profession."

This always seemed kinda silly- I mean, my first co-op was writing java apps to manage industrial radios. There wasn't much moral ambiguity going on.

Anyway, I'm wonder what sort of ethical dilemmas one might actually encounter in software development.

Edit:

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. - Nathanial Borenstein

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A lot of the stuff presented as unethical here is either illegal or can get the company into other sorts of trouble (like losing the ability to accept credit cards). – David Thornley Oct 1 '10 at 22:01
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Being from Baghdad I find that quote highly offensive. An ethical programmer wouldn't make such a quote. Instead, he would write the quote with DestoryX as the procedure name. :%s/Baghdad/X/ – hasen j Nov 10 '10 at 23:43
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up vote 1 down vote

Code that poses a safety hazard. I wasn't the one writing it but I became aware of it and had to make a stink. (The guy writing it didn't realize the danger.) The code controlled a saw that would have no difficulty slicing a person in two and they were implementing the emergency-stop in software.

(No, we didn't sell these saws. I don't know what was wrong with the original control system for the saw but we were replacing the software for some reason.)

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Computer games. Especially MMO games. Some people are enjoying the game, but some people become addicted! So when I am developin MMO project at my job I am adding good and evil things in this world. Sometimes this is really blow out my mind.

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Working for a private company and having socialist principles. I know numerous people who consider themselves socialist, and ethically sound yet work for a large "evil" corporation.

I find this very hypocritical.

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hypocritical, yes... unethical.. no. – Walter Sep 17 '10 at 11:44
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I disagree, if you are employed by someone you are actively working towards and supporting the goals of that company. – NimChimpsky Sep 19 '10 at 12:37
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Socialists have to live, too. If you have a choice between starving to death or behaving in a way you wouldn't have to in your ideal world, it's neither unethical nor hypocritical to deal with the world as it is. If you're a socialist, you can probably push harder for your principles if you have money and respectability. Moreover, private companies often have good goals. – David Thornley Sep 24 '10 at 21:41
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@NimChimpsky: The world is what it is. We all want to change it in some way, but have to live in it. What you seem to be saying is that Socialists, by and large, should be poorer than non-Socialists. Since money talks, you're saying that Socialists should deliberately hamper their ability to change the world politically. I find this very unconvincing. – David Thornley Nov 10 '10 at 19:02
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