Yesterday, while walking down the street, I saw some words written in Latin on a terrace: “Primum non nocere”. I looked them up on Google and found that they mean “First, do no harm”. It’s a motto for health-related professions that emphasizes their main objective: the well-being of the patient and avoiding any harm.
I liked the idea, and after doing some research, I found that there’s nothing similar for programmers. So I started thinking and came up with a possible motto for our profession: “Tuere usorem, data, veritatem”.
Tuere: protect
usorem: the user
data: the data
veritatem: the truth
The user: as programmers, our main objective should be the user, making their experience as pleasant as possible and ensuring our program makes their life easier or more comfortable. In the case of open-source code, it can also help them learn.
The data: after the user, data is the most important thing because it’s almost always irreplaceable. It’s our responsibility to do everything possible to keep it safe and accessible.
The truth: today’s technology can be used to falsify information and spread lies, and the pace of change only makes this worse. As creators of much of this technology, we have a moral commitment to the truth.
What do you think? Does it make sense? Is there already a similar slogan that I haven’t found? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
PS: I don’t know any Latin, ChatGPT did the translation for me, so there may be some mistakes.
It makes sense to me 🙂
Just a note on the Latin translation: I studied Latin in secondary school, I am not an expert Latinist, but I think it should be something like
`Usuarium, data, et veritatem protege` or `Usuarium, data, et veritatem tue`
This is because I think the final verb should be imperative, and therefore users, data and truth become accusative, and should be placed before the verb.
More than a motto, it should be an exhortation to do the right thing.
Does this make sense?
I love it – I like that the user comes first (rather than refactoring!), and I like the general idea of having a motto as a grounding principle.
Also digging up old school Latin, but I think you can ditch the “et” and add an enclitic “-que” to the penultimate item in the list. So something like “Usuārium, data, vēritātemque prōtegite.”