I came across an article today that explained how in Italy the obsolete software and processes used in their vaccination efforts are actually killing people. I would suggest to have a read.
To be honest I felt angry, even furious after reading it. Also somehow I felt let down. I can’t understand how Italy who is one of the top 5 European economies, can allow crap like this in their public services.
In the UK also some weeks back there was also an scandal where MS Excel was being used to store important results. More about it here.
I think is shameful and unacceptable for this kind of things to happen. What infuriates me so much is to observe how the software industry is so hype driven and bragging all the time about the latest tech bullshit but is unable to solve trivial problems and keep people alive. Who is to blame here?
At an early stage in the beginnings of my software career around the years 2011 and 2012, I started to hear about Agile and also a movement within the industry called the software craftsmanship movement. I was fully evangelised by the articles and lectures and books of R.C Martin (a.k.a Uncle Bob). I did saw him twice live in conferences and what captivated me the most about this personality was how firmly stood for the principles of clean code and also professionalism.
In his talks about Software Craftsmanship uncle Bob used to make so much emphasise on professionalism. Today his words echoed in my head as I read that article about Italy’s health services. Here a video of one of those of R.C Martin’s talks. At 18.50 he says
how many people have died because programmers were careless?
Do you see where I am coming from, what I am trying to say? Many times in the life of the developer, we are forced to fit our work within obsolete processes that make no sense or we are maybe scared with words such as mvp, deadline, market window, etc … Sadly companies are filled with fearful developers, there’s lack of leadership and a huge amount of bureaucracy and politics are harming the industry.
This were my thoughts after reading that article. Hopefully this crisis will make people a bit more conscious about the importance of professionalism. Is all of us including developers to raise the voice and criticise our systems and processes when they don’t work well. We need to say No! to the political and bureaucratic non sense and push for always writing good software, no excuses. We are not code monkeys. We are professionals, we are software craftsmen!
