Current concerns about our industry

April 28, 2021 2 minute read

I follow a lot of folks on Twitter and one of the things Twitter succeeds at frequently is riling me up, and making me angry about stuff.

Sometimes, that’s fine because there are serious issues plaguing our industry! However, sometimes people are just jealous of other folks’ success stories and want to bring them down. (Which I think is unfortunate. As a sidenote, I do think that bad ideas deserve to be called out.)

In my previous post about PHP Monitor I touched on a few of my fundamental rules for developing the tool. One of the reasons I have these rules is because I have recently felt that our industry is leading us in the wrong direction.

Most importantly, I think software should carefully make use of your hardware, so that your machine isn’t slowed down due to bad technical decisions or features that are not needed.

That being said, as a developer I’m part of an entire industry with many moving parts. I’ve been made aware of the following issues that I think are concerning:

These issues are broadly categorizable in three categories:

  • Environmental deterioration
  • Fundamental software & hardware issues
  • Ethical issues that are unhandled

I sadly believe that the outcome of this — if these concerns are not handled — will land us in a dishonest and imbalanced surveillance society first. After that, society is at risk of perishing: because if we destroy our environment, both society and humanity are at risk.

What can we do? As individuals, our ability to do things is limited. As a group, we can act. I’ve seen some stuff that has made me consider quitting my job and leaving the software industry entirely. That being said, I think as an insider it is easier to change our industry than from outside.

Tagged as: Tech