Skip to main content

Developers and Politics: A good idea?

I just learned that Kevin Ragsdale is running for Congress  he's running as an independent and as he notes on his campaign website, he's running for change in politics (a common theme in this US election) but more importantly as he notes, he has 9 trillion reasons to run (the National Debt). So good luck Kevin!


As he notes:
"When I'm approached to create a solution, I simply study the problem and apply logic and common sense...Maybe we could use a few more programmers in Washington, and a few less lawyers."

So that got me thinking. Are there generic pros and cons about developers running for congress?

Pros
1. As Kevin notes, logic is a key component of programming logic. While not necessarily that of everyone who writes a program (or a compiler), the key point is once you know the rules of the compiler, logic will prevail (for the most part). Does that apply to government or politics? It's supposed to, except that politicians always like to change the rules.

2. Passionate. Of course, here, I'm talking about real developers/programmers/analysts, not the ones who go into computer science because of the job opportunity. The same could be said about anyone who really enjoys their work. I believe it was Plato who actually said the only person who shouldn't govern are the ones who want to govern (or something to that effect, someone refresh my quote).

3. Ready for change. As Kevin notes above, he looks to create "solutions". You start with one solution but if presented with a better one, you go for it.

Cons

1. Forget about party lines - what about the language lines? Ideally, developers don't get too crazy about their choice of tools. But one can only look at the differences and attitudes between some Win devs vs. Linux devs to question it a little. Would a little Washington make a difference?

2. Too much logic? Is there are such a thing? Then again, if you look at pros 1 and 2, they don't have to conflict.

What do you think? Are there others?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Comparing education systems based on their technology

(yes, I originally found this blog because of Scoble's note on it BUT it was kind of interesting all the same) Read Alex Mallet's summary of his first week at MIT. Malletrivia: Summary of the first complete week Wow - "There's an incredible amount of material packed into each lecture" - and it sounds interesting... Compared to some of the lecture content I have seen at our universities, you really must get what you pay for. While it sounds like Alex is writing frantically down notes in his classes, at least he's finding something worth writing about in them. Case in point: one of our local universities ( Carleton ) puts some lecture classes on the TV (like many universities do) - but you would think they purposely find the most boring professors to teach them. They put up PowerPoint slides with 30 points on them, speak in monotone voice (yes, imagine the typical caricature of the university lecture from years ago), tell the students to print their...
8 comments
Read more