Our code of ethics is broken into 3 sections: Integrity, Community, and Engagement. Integrity is important as both a student and a computer scientist. Our work should be our own and our work should better society, or at least be used for good and not evil. Community is important because computer science requires a lot of group work and open source contributions. We should be the best computer scientists we can be. We should be supportive of each other and try to be good ambassadors for our field. Engagement is important in everything we do. We will do our best learning if we are totally engaged in our studies or work, and if we are passionate about the subject. We can help others learn better by being engaged in class and asking thought provoking questions. We can help others be more excited and passionate by sharing our love for certain topics with them. By being engaged in any sort of group work we can produce better more cohesive products. And finally by being engaged in our own projects we can help others (or ourselves) in the future who may try to use or read your code.
I think one of the major weaknesses in our code of ethics is that there is a lot of overlap in our three main sections. The overlap makes the document cohesive, but also makes the separation confusing in some parts. If someone were to give you each individual bullet point, and ask you put them in the correct categories (Integrity, Community, or Engagement), it would be pretty difficult. In order to fix this problem we could try to elaborate on each bullet point more and further discuss it’s relation to the section it’s in. We could also give a better description of what separates each section.
I believe a code of ethics can be very useful! It is a great way to let key values for a group of people be known. However, it is only effective if people actually abide by it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who think they are above these rules. I think this brings me back to the “Community” aspect and being a good ambassador. By being a strong representative of a “good” or “ethical” computer scientist, we can hopefully inspire others to do the same, and show the world that we are ethical people.
I found it useful to discuss with others what makes a “good” and “ethical” computer scientist and student. This helped me find goals to strive for and ideals to abide by. Hopefully others will try to strive to be “good” and “ethical” as well.