Sex and Drugs and Guns and Code

This workshop presents a few ideas about people and society that programmers ought to know. All of the material is available under an open license, and contributions through our repository are welcome. All participants are required to respect our Code of Conduct.

Learner Persona

This workshop teaches Jay a few key ideas from psychology, sociology, and political science, while the exercises help him figure out how these ideas apply to tech.

Syllabus

  1. Introduction
  2. How Has the Porn Industry Shaped Privacy Rights?
  3. How Are Big Tech Companies Like Cocaine Cartels?
  4. Why Are There So Many Shootings in the United States?
  5. What Does It Mean for Software to Be Property?
  6. What Kinds of Fraud do Tech Companies Commit?
  7. Why Is It So Hard to Measure the Productivity of Programmers?
  8. Why Is Bandwidth So Expensive?
  9. Why Don't Software Engineers Need to Be Licensed?
  10. Why Don't Software Engineers Join Unions?
  11. How Do Org Charts and Software Shape Each Other?
  12. Why Does Central Planning Work for Companies When It Failed for Countries?
  13. Why Don't Do-ocracies Work (Either)?
  14. Who Gets To Interrupt Whom in Meetings?
  15. What Is "Bullshit" and Why Do People Believe It?
  16. Who's Really to Blame When an Accident Happens?
  17. Why Do Students (and Executives) Cheat?

Appendices

  1. License
  2. Bibliography
  3. Glossary

Start where you are
Use what you have
Help who you can