"Do I owe you a duty of some kind?"


If you save someone's life, you're responsible for it. At least isn't that what they say the Chinese say?

Context is all important here, as in all things.

At the time, I thought and styled those exchanges in terms of Job and the Whirlwind. And, uncharacteristically, that time I think I was more the put-upon fool railing at The Creator than the great volume of moving (hot?) air.

But we all edit our reality as we remember it, to greater or lesser extent, to suit our own purposes.


I would that I had asked different questions.

For example, Why did you become a programmer? Why did you create that particular application at that particular time?
To produce the killer app, to corner the market and make your fortune?

Or were your goals more altruistic? "I did it to help people, whose lives became the better for the tools I made."

Or was it simply that you loved to program, got a charge from the intellectual challenge of breaking a problem down and a deep feeling of satisfaction when you solved it, especially elegantly?

What was the motivation, exactly? (And while I've been censured once before for intimating motives less than admirable, what is theirs, now?)


Most programmers probably fall somewhere in between the poles. And that's OK. But don't give me some bullshit song about one thing when you're obviously dancing to another tune.

"Do I owe you a duty of some kind?" Thus The Creator to Job. The programmer to the client, since that's what I was--yes, I did pay, out of my own pocket, for the English version I use(d). (The Japanese version was bought using my school research funds, and while it wasn't my money in one sense, it was in another. No academic discount, either, mind you, although they did gratiously cut $100 off the price since I claimed ownership of a previous version.) That from someone whose company folded (not once, but three times) for some unexplained reason or reasons (in absence of evidence or clear statement one way or the other, one might surmise half-assed management, no?), leaving users in a lurch and scrambling to find alternatives. (I'm currently going through that list, by the way, doing a casual survey of how many companies and dependent software projects have gone under as a result...yeah, I have a vindictive streak, however vicarious the injury.)

Now who, if not the executive corps, is responsible? (And who has ever apologized? If someone has, please disabuse me of my ignorance! Either way, The Creator obviously feels no need to do so of late.) Anyone on the corporate side?

Well no, because no one made those other developers and companies adopt and use that particular tool. This must be a great comfort in the wee hours: It's not our fault; we don't owe them anything.

Nah, not a thing.

Such is the state of corporate moral obligation and responsibility at the end of the Twentieth and beginning of the Twenty-First Century...pretty sad, ain't it?

And now we're being offered something old as something new (Something borrowed? Wish we knew!), by a new set of players...but unfortunately following the same old rules. Same ole same ole, as one of my cousins is fond of saying.

What guarantee do we have that things are going to go any differently this time?

None. Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Posted: Wed - November 17, 2004 at 01:26 AM           |

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