What exactly does a software engineer/software programmer do?

What is the name of the programmer who wrote the Therac-25 software?

• The code for the Therac-25 is said to have been  written by one person. What was that person's name? See for example at http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~kohler/class/05f-osp/ref/leveson93investigation.pdf, page 20: "The programmer left AECL in 1986. In a lawsuit connected with one of the accidents, the lawyers were unable to obtain information about the programmer from AECL. In the depositions connected with that case, none of the AECL employees questioned could provide any information about his educational background or experience. Although an attempt was made to obtain a deposition from the programmer, the lawsuit was settled before this was accomplished. We have been unable to learn anything about his background." (It's possible that the code was largely a port of the Therac-6 or Therac-20 code -- it would also be interesting to hear who wrote that.)

• Answer:

  It is highly unfair and unethical for that persons name to be known beyond to perhaps potential employers and/or an lingering litigation (which they are 100% shielded from and thus again not ethical). How would you like it if doing your job the best you know how using the best available methods at the time somehow accidentally made a engineering disaster.   A good example of why this is bad policy is the person who designed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge also designed the Golden Gate, the vast majority of bridges to and from Manhatten and many other well known bridge projects.  The real failing there was not their work but a client that pushed for more and more cost savings in material until the bridge simply didn't have enough dead mass to resist harmonic motion.   Is the fault fo the designer, the client or both... I say both and it is highly unfair and unethical to single the designer out.