A programmer's oath

&gt; I will remember that there is art to software engineering as well as technology , and that there is beauty in code. I will not forget that programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.<p>Why is this a part of the oath?<p>&gt; I will use technology for good and for the progress of mankind, free of evil, for the betterment of peoples&#x27; lives.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Moral_relativism</a>

I like the idea behind this and there&#x27;s some good stuff here. This one irked me a little because it&#x27;s lacking nuance:<p>&gt; I will remember that technology always improves, and will never stop learning, and the purpose of my life will be continuous self-improvement.<p>&quot;The purpose of my life&quot; is too strong of a phrase that makes this one sound like it trumps the others.<p>&quot;Technology always improves&quot; is true at the macro level, but there are a lot of fads, minor regressions, and forgotten gems from the past.

I swear: that I will create websites with sufficient contrast between text and background to enable legibility of textual content.<p><a href="http://www.contrastrebellion.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.contrastrebellion.com&#x2F;</a>

&gt; I will not be ashamed to say &quot;I know not&quot;<p>If every manager would abide this, my chances of ending up in jail for manslaughter would decrease significantly.

Nicely written! You may also want to take a look at ACM&#x27;s Software Engineering Code of Ethics[1].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.acm.org/about/se-code" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.acm.org&#x2F;about&#x2F;se-code</a>

I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s lots of pithy oaths used by programmers over the years, I know I&#x27;ve used a few

I&#x27;ve been programming for 31 years, 22 of which are professional experience. This list was hilarious. If it wasn&#x27;t meant as a joke then you take yourself way too seriously.

A briefer version:<p><i>If Goldman-Sachs or the NSA would do it, I won&#x27;t.</i>

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. &#x27;nuf said.

I like the idea of an oath like this and also thought about creating something a bit similar. Maybe you could call it a &quot;Hippocratic Oath of Computer Science&quot;.<p>I think it should be extended to all computer scientists not just programmers (or maybe even all of science). Some things in the oath should be a lot more explicit and more strict in my opinion. For example creating or helping create weapons or surveillance technology should be strictly forbidden.

It misses a logo, which you can put on your personal website to signal &quot;I swore that oath&quot;.

I will test my changes before I commit them to production.

A nice idea. I just contributed a Dutch translation.

frankly, most of the list is fluff. I would put up there with user privacy, user experience. The mot annoying, dangerous, and demoralizing thing programmers can do is create insecure and badly designed software.