Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

I worked years ago on a project named babeltree(.org).

Don't know if it's still active, but the idea (and the founder) behind it was really about making the world a better place.

This is going to sound pessimistic at first but hear me out: Unless you're extremely gifted in many ways and super resourceful, you're not likely to make any noticeable impact on the species.

However, you can still make a big difference for groups much smaller than the whole species (and I think that's actually preferable from a human point of view because it's more tangible). The world is full of problems that could easily be solved by good software. This is especially true in industries that are usually not very technological by themselves.

Depending on your current network you might have gotten to know an industry or two that is not strictly technological. If not, ask your friends who do not program software all day and ask them what problems they have at work that they find annoying and try to come up with a software solution for that.

Once you do that, convince their bosses that it saves them more money to pay for your software than to do things the old way.

GP appears to use a very idiosyncratic metric of such interest.

...Unless it's advetising. Or Uber. Or government wanting you to implement yet another freedom-restricting bullshit.

Honestly, I think the most effective thing to do is find an organization doing social good, who is hiring programmers, and go work for them. There are plenty of non-profits and governments that do a ton of good, and employ developers to work on their web sites and infrastructures. A good friend of mine is a developer for the ACLU, for example.

There are also organizations like Code for America that do open source work with local governments. Since those projects are open source, you could probably volunteer your time and contribute to those. Or simply volunteer in a non-developer capacity! :)

Doing actual social good -- helping people in ways that will actually solve their problems, understanding the consequences of changing their lives -- requires a ton of context and communication. I think it's very, very difficult to do so without either dedicating most of your time to that cause, or working closely with an organization that is already doing so. (E.g., volunteering for a food bank is a lot more effective than just picking up food and distributing it on your own.)