Software engineering is also a profession that has provided us an opportunity to learn much about how an occupation becomes a profession. A great part of drafting the Software Engineering Code was done by email; and much of that email has survived. For many provisions of the Code, we need not guess how they came to be or what the drafters’ intent was. We have a record of the stages the provisions passed through, with the drafters’ explanation of each change. Though the record is incomplete (as records generally are), it is (as far as I can tell) fuller than any other we have for the writing of a profession’s code of ethics.
