Is it ok to murder a program
I’ve been thinking about the life of humans in relation to the programs we write. Here are some examples,
Scenario 1
We assume that there is a law that allows murder if and only if you will make one offspring and raise it until it reaches the age of the murder victim.
Scenario 2
Let us assume that a person is on his/her deathbed, and you were given a knife. You are allowed to end the person’s suffering a day before the natural death. Will you do it? What if it was an hour before, a second before or a millisecond before. Will you still do it?
Scenario 3
What if they are in so much pain that they beg you to end their lives? I have seen this scenario in some movies and video games.
Scenario 4
What if the person is a threat to yourself or the mankind?
Which of this is acceptable Or morally right thing to do?
Personally, I would only agree with Scenario 4, if and only if we are in say hanging on a cliff and the other person is a villain holding on to me and not letting me go. I would kick that sucker off the cliff. (lol)
Scenario 3 is much more difficult to decide. Since the decision is based on what situation and environment you are in. What if we are in war and your fellow soldier is poisoned, and you are running out of time? The enemy is approaching. You can’t carry him, because he is a fat fuck (haha). But he knows secrets that he can’t reveal to the enemy. Well, will you do it then? Or maybe give a gun to shoot himself?
Other scenario’s does not feel morally right. right? We can think of more scenario’s like this.
Programs in relation with the above-mentioned scenarios
- Scenario 1: Deprecating old programs, in favour of new one. Most of the time, the good ideas are not carried over. Instead, replaced by shitty ones.
- Scenario 2: Killing programs/software before absolutely no one is using it. In fact, the Mega corps. go to great lengths to make sure no one uses it.
- Scenario 3: Programs released with so many bugs it is completely unusable and programs that are absolutely not user-friendly. It causes mental and physical pain every-time you use it.
- Scenario 4: Bloated programs, “y u do dis?” and imagine that the program is a threat to yourself or the mankind? Like Sky-net for example from Terminator 3.
- There are more scenarios that I could come up. Maybe for another day…
Death of Programs
Firstly, we are in an era where, programs can outlive humans forever. As long as there are materials to make circuit boards, the programs can self replicate and live forever. At what point the program should die? Well, this is a deep question, but that is not the point of this blog post.
My problem is, there are a lot of good programs out there dying and killed/murdered just because there is no one to continue the support and development. Obviously I can’t fix them, I don’t have the time. So who will? So you just let them die? Do you murder them just like humans?
The answer is quite simple, the Mega corporations make these choices for you. As stupid as this sounds, when was the last time the video games and programs that you like kept working still now? As time goes on, these piece of tech will be lost and will be replaced and controlled by something from the Mega corps. A bit of a Cyberpunk story, ain’t it?
How do we keep something good, good forever? A program is an Idea. It is not a rock that turns to dust, nor water that evaporates. It is not a material that changes. Zero is still Zero and One is still One. Even though the environment and system changes, the core idea does not. At-least, if it is good enough.
I think every programmer should think of this. Because good ideas are meant to be preserved and carried over to the next generation and on and on and be tested till then the end of time.
There is a quote from this Netflix TV series “A trip to infinity”, that all life will come to an end. And there will be a last thought, and there will be a last human making that thought.
Well now I believe that there will be a last program as well. The complexity we still don’t know. What will it be doing? We do not know. But it will exist and will be there after that human dies. What will it do? We don’t know.
Write down ideas/programs every day, Use those ideas/programs to write a better one the next day. Isn’t that what we are doing already? Definitely not.
Why am I ranting? I and other programmers must write programs that should be easy to use that can be used by everyone and forever and maybe help humans relax a bit. After all, we are going to die anyway. But Ideas are forever.
Imagine the chair that you are sitting on, do you know who designed and constructed the first chair? No, of course not. The idea is good and simple and open to the naked eyes that anyone can copy and replicate with 100% accuracy. Programs are not that case, they are vague and the ideas that they convey are not so simple. How do we propagate the ideas such that posterity does not forget?
I have no “Idea”. :)
P.S.
You can construct a chair without having a chair. But you can only construct a computer with another computer (At-least in the current generation and future too.).
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein