> And all of this happening while many beat their chests demanding that programming be made a compulsory subject in public schools. What a sickening irony.
Indeed. Also note how the typical curriculum offered by proponents is geared towards teaching people to create things that will be ad-supported or will be providing ads.
I wish to know if there's a way to fight back somehow. Maybe not to reverse the trend, but to separate ourselves from it? Let the masses have their appliances if they really like them, but let us keep our tools.
The thing I fear is professionalization of programming, when we become a legitimate engineering discipline and thus will have to work for an expensive license to legally use a turing-complete language, and compilers is something you can go to jail for if they see you trying to run it without credentials.
Senator Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) in 2001 introduced the SSSCA, the bill to take away all the pansy freedom of speech provisions of the DMCA and really lock down computers for the legitimate big business that should control programming. It was Hollings's 35th year as the junior senator from South Carolina and -- as chairman of the Commerce Committee -- he had really decided to crack down.
The SSSCA as introduced would have prohibited, with criminal penalties, the possession without a license of a compiler capable of producing programs that could process, copy, or decrypt data in media files. Every Turing-complete programming language in the country would have required a special federal license to use. Finally, only licensed, bonded, qualified, and tracked professionals taking responsibility for their actions could violate our precious copyrights.
But Hollings wasn't as spry as his senior colleague from South Carolina and retired before he could finish his final good work for the corporations that made him. Even that business so famously unashamed that its own mascot is a rodent would have to settle for waiting a little longer to achieve its aims.
Software is incredibly dangerous. All the malware that spreads exists because a) you have a general-purpose computer to run it on, and b) they have a general-purpose language to write it in. By restricting a) and b) we're ensuring your safety, as well as the safety of our critical infrastructure, baking, etc.
The arguments aren't actually that bad (of course we know that currently the strongest side supporting them is media companies trying to kill general-purpose computing to make unbreakable DRMs, but in principle they sort of have a point...) - it's the cost that is too high.
And all executable code must be signed by the register that licensed you, so the code that runs can be audited back to its creator. However, the Software Engineers Union will offer the developer some legal protection, as well as negotiating the trade wages by scale.
Well, the baking industry is certainly more productive of human comfort and happiness than certain other industries demanding protection from the laws the rest of us live by -- such as finance.
Well, there have been similar submissions every few weeks, and there was a pretty long discussion about it 7 weeks ago [1], so it'd probably be a dupe.
Indeed. Also note how the typical curriculum offered by proponents is geared towards teaching people to create things that will be ad-supported or will be providing ads.
I wish to know if there's a way to fight back somehow. Maybe not to reverse the trend, but to separate ourselves from it? Let the masses have their appliances if they really like them, but let us keep our tools.
The thing I fear is professionalization of programming, when we become a legitimate engineering discipline and thus will have to work for an expensive license to legally use a turing-complete language, and compilers is something you can go to jail for if they see you trying to run it without credentials.