Responsibilities of Software Programmers?!

[TweakD]

I have been given an assignment in my introduction to programming class, we are required to research the responsibilities that programmers need to consider.
We are told to explore the responsibilities in programmers general practice, viruses, maintenance, bugs etc and are told we must cover all three areas, legal/ethical/moral. I have been to my local library, searched the internet and have not found any useful information. if anyone could post links to sites that have this sort of information, or if you could give information from personal experience it would be GREATLY appreciated

Thanks in advance
TweakD

[WingedPanther]

For legal responsibilities, you can review computer crime laws. I'm not clear on the distinction between ethical and moral.

From a day-to-day perspective, my responsibilities are to make sure the code I produce works, is reasonably efficient, is documented, is written in such a manner that I or another person can maintain it later with relative ease. Changes need to be documented both for release notes and within the customer documentation. Testing code to attempt to make sure no bugs exist is a high priority. Bugs that are found by customers tend to be addressed based on the severity of the bug and available resources. Viruses don't really apply to our software, though we use anti-virus software on our computers to protect our systems and the applications we produce from being accidentally infected.

[Xav]

A good programmer needs to respect a user's computer - especially when it comes to editing the registry, and the like. Many programs use redundant entries, and create useless files that clog up computers - mostly without asking the user first.

[Aereshaa]

And in terms of memory: avoid memory leaks like the plague! They slow down computers and make users hate you. That's why you should always free stuff you allocate.

[marwex89]

Sometimes a programmer must not only be a coder but also a designer, tester etc. I have been "responsible" for a few projects where "the software is your stuff, I'll take care of this %&#..." kinda bosses...