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Discussion on: What’s an unpopular software opinion you have?

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Benny Powers 🇮🇱🇨🇦

It's appropriate to talk about choice of tech stack in moral terms.

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rhymes

Interesting Benny, what do you mean?

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Benny Powers 🇮🇱🇨🇦 • Edited

I've heard the argument that "the only thing that matters is what tools this team thinks are best to solve their problems", meaning, moral considerations should not be a part of technical discussions. I think it's a cousin to "I'm talking businesses, not ethics, don't bother me about it".

Did you know that throughout the entire Sefer Beresheet (Book of Genesis), the word emunah (loosely, "faith") refers only to one thing: honesty in business dealings?

So I think that business considerations, including technical considerations, are moral considerations as well.

Will this technology help us to serve people better? Will it exclude people (users or beginning developers)? What about the maintainers of this piece of tech, do their values undermine our own? What will adopting this technology lead to in our industry? In the broader culture?

It's worth asking those questions.

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rhymes profile image
rhymes

It's worth asking those questions.

Thanks for the explanation and in theory yes, it's worth it and it's worth getting the answer to those questions. The thing is that various people have various levels of ethics and morals (a simple example: employees at giant companies that do good and bad things).

Will this technology help us to serve people better? Will it exclude people (users or beginning developers)?

What about the maintainers of this piece of tech, do their values undermine our own?

This can be hard to measure for every piece of tech...

What will adopting this technology lead to in our industry? In the broader culture?

Great questions by the way!