alt Hacker NewsIck. That turned my stomach. Sure it's bad for end users that corporate mobile app development is a swamp. In this case it only affects the vendor who lost out on users and reputation. But cavalier, reckless engineering equally causes harm to the client device or end user - if only in wasted time.
Given the audience here, I hope many would agree it's pitiful that developers are wasting their time building this junk. Some poor sap had to make this, probably sighing and shrugging at the end of each line of code.
Unions or professional body membership is becoming more important for programmers. People need to be able to say "I studied what you asked me to make, and refuse to work on this illegal, insecure, depressing cruft, and if you fire me for having professional ethics my lawyers will empty your company bank account." Otherwise technologists become just tools of destruction.
Replies
> professional body membership is becoming more important for programmers. People need to be able to say "I studied what you asked me to make, and refuse to work on this illegal, insecure, depressing cruft, and if you fire me for having professional ethics my lawyers will empty your company bank account."
I think this might be an interesting one to consider, other than the "depressing" bit of course. The problem is, I think, if you have the accreditation and you develop an insecure application, do you lose the accreditation? What's the tradeoff?
I think you should study how well such professional posturing helps groups that have it (civil engineers, lawyers, etc).
In my experience it’s a symbolic political power that management has effective ways of limiting.
Why would you want to continue working at such a place as a developer? It's not like it's hard to find another job as developer...
> People need to be able to say "I studied what you asked me to make, and refuse to work on this illegal, insecure, depressing cruft, and if you fire me for having professional ethics my lawyers will empty your company bank account."
This only works if everyone or the vast majority join unions. Otherwise, those who join will get penalised with lower offers or no offers at all.