Attended leetspeak, the tretton37 developers’ conference.

The morning sessions were less technical and focused on the ethics of software development. “Code that goes wrong – is it my fault?” Interesting discussions. What is our responsibility? When should we say no? A few thoughts and comments that I especially remember:

• Do project managers and product owners expect us developers to always deliver faster and faster because they cannot understand the complexity of what we do? Or is it because we keep feeding their expectations, and delivering faster than what is sustainable?
• It is perfectly possible and even easy to become a developer without ever having considered the ethics of this profession. There is no certification required. Anyone with a two-month JavaScript boot camp under their belt can start calling themselves as a developer. Even if you have a CompSci degree, ethics courses are usually optional.
• Every developer should give some thought to two things. One, where does your line go? What are the things that you would say no to? (Weapons software? Gambling? Lying to your users?) Two, what is your path of escalation? If you see something you need to say no to, and your manager will not listen, who do you talk to?
• One of the panel members worked with online marketing. When the question about everyone’s “lines” came up, she jokingly said that if that’s the case then she would have to quit her job entirely. “Then you should,” was my immediate thought, “and the world would not miss what you have been doing.”

The highlight of the afternoon was Eric Wastl’s behind-the-scenes talk about Advent of Code. Passionate and inspiring, interesting and entertaining.