There are some long lists of false beliefs that programmers hold. isn't because programmers are especially likely to be more wrong than anyone else, it's just that programming offers a better opportunity than most people get to find out how incomplete their model of the world is.
I'm posting about this here, not just because this information has a decent chance of being both entertaining and useful, but because LWers try to figure things out from relatively simple principles-- who knows what simplifying assumptions might be tripping us up?
The classic (and I think the first) was about names. There have been a few more lists created since then.
Time. And time zones. Crowd-sourced time errors.
Addresses. Possibly more about addresses. I haven't compared the lists.
Gender. This is so short I assume it's seriously incomplete.
Networks. Weirdly, there is no list of falsehoods programmers believe about html (or at least a fast search didn't turn anything up). Don't trust the words in the url.
Distributed computing Build systems.
Poem about character conversion.
I got started on the subject because of this about testing your code, which was posted by Andrew Ducker.
I don't think it's based on any ethical theory, but the ethical theory to which I subscribe is approximately utilitarianism.
It occurs to me that there is an ambiguity about "I think no one should do X". Taken literally it means something like "I prefer a world in which no one does X", but of course one can imagine a lot of different sorts of world in which no one does X. The most probable such world is probably one in which everyone is prevented from doing X, but that isn't what I had in mind (and I think it's very seldom what anyone who says things like "I think no one should do X" has in mind).
Your opinion is noted. I'm not sure to what extent you're seriously stating your position, and to what extent you're attempting a sort of reductio ad absurdum (since "I would suggest you'd be being a jerk" is kinda symmetric with "I'd suggest they'd be being rude", etc.) -- but if you mean what you say, then apparently you think laughing at someone for their choice of clothes is less obnoxious than saying someone's being rude by doing that. I wonder why?
I think I could have predicted that with some confidence a priori.
Less politically-motivated employers, however, might well prefer their employees not to behave in ways that predictably lose them customers and goodwill. If someone comes into your shop and you laugh at them, that is not likely to be good for the business. They might prefer their employees not to behave in ways that prevent effective teamwork. If one of your colleagues comes into work and you laugh at them, you're less likely to be able to work well together, which is also not good for the business.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I did not have in mind cases like the following: X is a software developer; X is sitting at his computer thinking about the design for some code, notices a news article in another window that includes someone wearing a dress, thinks they look silly, and laughs. That might or might not indicate opinions or attitudes I think they'd be better off without, but it's not likely to be rude or discriminatory and it's none of my business.)
I don't know about "seldom". For example, I have a feeling that many people who say "I think no one should be racist" do have in mind a world where others are prevented from being racist.