That's what the developer of marrow.org might have thought. And then:
> I fussed around with the website to update my contact data
If someone did a better job designing or testing the UI on that web app, who knows how many extra lives may have been saved.
When I think about it, I've worked on at least three projects where bugs or usability issues could potentially have a direct impact on someone's life. Yet we didn't reflect on it much in the course of our day-to-day routine.
Being a donor is a bold action, but don't underestimate the impact of your development work as well.
At one point I worked on reviewing the code for an emergency alert system for a university. Our group made it really simple not notify 60k people of all sorts of emergencies, through a really simple UI. We had it calling, texting, emailing, updating Facebook and Twitter and displaying messages on TV screens.
We also had an equally important test system so the campus police could test their familiarity with the procedures daily. This is the kind of app that saves lives; hence the line-by-line code reviews of every single change to the application, and backup procedures for backup procedures in case something breaks.
It is true, not every day you get to work on something like that. However, when you do, it always makes the hair on the back of your head stand up each time you find a bug.
> I fussed around with the website to update my contact data
If someone did a better job designing or testing the UI on that web app, who knows how many extra lives may have been saved.
When I think about it, I've worked on at least three projects where bugs or usability issues could potentially have a direct impact on someone's life. Yet we didn't reflect on it much in the course of our day-to-day routine.
Being a donor is a bold action, but don't underestimate the impact of your development work as well.