Ep. 122 - The Ethics of Coding (Bill Sourour)

CodeNewbie

Episode | Podcast

Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Bill Sourour was twenty-one when he was asked to build a website for a pharmaceutical company. It was a quiz that asked users to select symptoms so that it could recommend a drug as a possible solution. But for almost every option the user selected, the quiz would recommend the same drug. It didn’t feel right, but when Bill later heard that a side effect of the drug was depression and a young woman who had taken that drug had committed suicide, it felt very, very wrong. Bill tells us the story of his first code-related ethical conflict, his thoughts on the role of ethics in coding, and how the incident affects how he approaches code today. Show Links Compiler (sponsor) Porkbun (sponsor) Not Just Code Monkeys - Martin Fowler talk IEEE Code of Ethics Michael Lewis' Flashboys ACM Code of Ethics Dev Mastery Codeland Conf Codeland 2019