I am a boring enterprise developer.
I have been this boring enterprise developer for the last 15 years.
I am the Unseen 99% that Scott Hanselman alludes to.
Every night I go to sleep wondering if my work makes any difference.
That is - until the Horizon scandal happened.
Aerospace engineers love to inform us that if they make a mistake people die.
Mechanical engineers love making the same argument. "That bridge cannot fall!!!"
Every Christmas you have to listen to how your sister-in-law, who is a doctor, saves lives and a mistake from her can kill people and how you will never understand the pressures of her job.
So, here it is, my dear boring unseen enterprise developer - the horizon scandal - your thanksgiving dinner war story.
You see what we did is far far worse than what these aerospace engineers, these mechanical engineers or these doctors can do.
We did not kill the sub-postmasters, we transformed them into living zombies.
Destroyed their lives, their health, their reputation while still alive. Death, in this case, would have been a blessing.
Now I know that this scandal is more about how the people in charge handled the situation rather than the software developers but even so, it is something to think about.
So that Friday evening reconciliation batch program that you are fixing, maybe that is worth something. Is it not?
If your bosses are anything like the con-artists at the Post Office/Fujitsu/Boeing, then you have to get it right, the first time.
I mean, you must do it right, there is no room for even the smallest error here.
Because, you don't know, how many lives these sociopaths bosses will ruin and kill before they admit to a mistake.
Are you feeling the pressure now?
Not so boring now is it?
Happy Coding!!!
Obviously, this post is written in jest but what I personally feel is anything but funny.
My apologies to all the sub-postmasters. I cannot help but feel complicit in this crime.
Horizon is the type/class of software I work on daily. They have helped pay my bills for the last 15 years and continue to do so. But sometimes we get sloppy.
P.S. I cannot wrap my head round this scandal. False accounting? Isn’t Accounting the most overrated and the most solved problem in software? How shit are we?