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Software v. law

5 comments on Software v. law

Software v. law

: Following my riff the other day on how society will change as former programmers take over the roles now filled by former lawyers (see also Rick Klau’s better take), Clay Shirky pointed me to James Grimmelmann’s riff on the essential morality of law v. software (which follows on Lawrence Lessig’s thesis that code is law). I think this is looking at things through the wrong side of the prism: What’s more interesting to me than laws or software is the people in front of and behind them: What do each say about their creators; how do each affect society? Still, Grimmelmann’s essay is a provocative read and I like this thread of conversation — a culture of lawyers v. a culture of programmers — and hope it keeps going.

: UPDATE: Tomas Kohl respectfully disagrees about a programmers’ utopia:

Programmers are chaotic. They constantly challenge the causal nature of programming languages and combat the impossible. They know that problems can be fixed only temporarily as they tend to resurface later and in greater numbers. When they make a mistake, they rarely admit it, and concentrate on shifting blame on Microsoft instead – remember that the word flamewar is synonymous with programming newsgroups (must have been invented there, actually). They do live in details, love details, and rarely see the big picture. They abhor transparency (of their code) as it makes them vulnerable (no one can fix it but them), and their cubicles, though theoretically open, are bastions, fortresses, bunkers; don’t ever ask them about anything, use ICQ and pray that you’ll be answered.

5 responses to “Software v. law”

  1. Pat Henry Avatar
    Pat Henry

    Sir,
    Have you seen the NYTimes today (Sat.) story on the NUL talk by Bush? The NYT says not much applause. The Kerry Spot (National Review) says more applause. Which is it? Is NYT biased? Or, is The Kerry Spot exaggerating?
    Also, the story says that Bush gave the talk at the last minute. This smacks your theory that Bush is prepared. Or, may be Bush lied to NYT by saying they just decided on NUL talk? What do you think?
    Pat Henry

  2. Charlie (Colorado) Avatar
    Charlie (Colorado)

    Jeff — the comment above is a troll. Exactly the same post (word for word) by the same signer appears in a thread on Roger Simon’s site, in a thread to which it was no more germane.

  3. David Foster Avatar
    David Foster

    People’s occupations tend to be closely related to their philosophical and political beliefs. Those who deal primarily with words tend strongly to the left. Those who deal primarily with things, don’t. (Try to imagine a post-modernist tool-and-die maker)
    What’s interesting about programmming, in this context, is that it has attributes of both words and things. Code consists of symbols; it *looks* like language..but it acts like a “thing” in that it is not very elastic, it doesn’t care what you feel, it gives you feedback as to whether it works or not.
    Not sure where I’m going with this, but thoughts are welcome.

  4. James Stephenson Avatar
    James Stephenson

    I have never programmers that were that uptight unless they were not sure of their work.
    Most of the Programmers I have worked with in my life have been the opposite. The ones like mentioned usually do not last very long.
    But there was this older programmer at my last job, writing Mainframe assembly. Now I had only been doing it for a couple of years, but he ask me to look at his code. He had been doing it for decades. He used headers like this AAAAAAAA, AAAAAAAB, AAAAAAAC and so forth. I asked him, how is someone coming in behind you going to know what the hell you meant, what was your thought process. He got a little defensive and pissy. So when the company was about to be sold, I left to work for the man who gave me my first programming job. He had started a new company. Well this fellow wanted to follow me, but I told my new boss I would not hire this man.
    Why, because he was like the person Tomas was talking about.
    I have only been doing this for 12 years, but here is what I have learned. If a Tech type can not take constructive criticism, they are unsure of themselves or bullshiter’s. If they are unwilling to open up and let you look at their code, again, unsure of themselves or bullshitters.
    Just my take on it.

  5. Jeff Medcalf Avatar
    Jeff Medcalf

    On the other hand, most programmers are decent, hard-working people who want their code as clear and understandable as possible, who would rather work a few weeks to fix a problem for good than spend a few minutes every day on it, who document their errors and fix them as they come up (it’s business managers who tend to blame MS, except when MS is actually at fault, which happens frequently if you’re working on Windows), who by and large don’t flame (that didn’t originate on programming groups but on social groups, especially the alt.*, talk.* and soc.* groups), are focused on end goals (if not kept in the dark about them), and love to answer questions (though they expect you to understand the answer).
    In other words, Thomas Kohl looks at the few jerks in the profession and decides that’s the profession. Like looking at Kos and deciding that he represents all bloggers.