brydzu / programmers-oath

An oath for programmers, comparable to the Hippocratic Oath

Programmer's Oath

As a programmer, I swear to fulfill these tenets:

0. I will only undertake honest and moral work. I will stand firm against any requirement that exploits or harms people.

1. I will respect the lessons learned by those who came before me, and will share what I learn with those to come.

2. I will remember that programming is art as well as science, and that warmth, empathy and understanding may outweigh a clever algorithm or technical argument.

3. I will not be ashamed to say "I don't know", and I will ask for help when I am stuck.

4. I will respect the privacy of my users, for their information is not disclosed to me that the world may know.

5. I will tread most carefully in matters of life or death. I will be humble and recognize that I will make mistakes.

6. I will remember that I do not write code for computers, but for people.

7. I will consider the possible consequences of my code and actions. I will respect the difficulties of both social and technical problems.

8. I will be diligent and take pride in my work.

9. I will recognize that I can and will be wrong. I will keep an open mind, and listen to others carefully and with respect.

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Something missing? Disagree with a tenet? Think the wording should be changed? Please open an issue and we can figure it out. I highly welcome collaboration, and I will do my best to facilitate an oath that reflects a diverse range of views.

Inspired by the Modern Hippocratic Oath and the Obligation of the Engineer.

My intention is to collaboratively write an oath that could be spread in my community. I think the importance of considering the impact of our actions as coders is huge, and not talked about enough.

A longer term goal would be to convince some companies to only hire developers who have taken the oath. Along the same lines if you had publicly taken the oath and your company wanted you to do something you feel is wrong, you would have a document to point at and discuss.

Signing

We have a list of public signatures in the SIGNATURES file.

If you wish to sign, please add your username and the current commit hash to the end of the SIGNATURES file, and submit a pull request.

If you do sign, please also consider sharing this repository in your communities and encouraging others to take a look.