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

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 Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (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

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.

Bill is the founder of DevMastery.com. A 20 year veteran programmer, architect, consultant, and teacher, he helps individual developers and billion dollar organizations become more successful every day.