When several coders work on a large project, it can become quite a task to keep track of their accomplishments and determine a programmer’s actual contribution.
This is why IBM has filed a new patent application titled “Blockchain For Program Code Credit and Programmer Contribution in a Collective.”
Published on July 5 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), this patent claims to provide a “secure and robust approach to track and to append information related to collaborative coding for the purpose of credit, reward, and dispute resolution, and for other purposes.”
As this new system is based on blockchain technology it will become much easier to catalog coding updates and milestones of a programmer.
According to its description, the contributions of each participant will be considered whenever a piece of code is written, submitted, detected by the distributed network and added as a block to the blockchain of the computer software program.
It further reads that a block may also get updated in response to triggers, such as selection of a button on a graphical user interface (GUI) on a computer display showing a code editor to add code, completion of a unit test, on code integration, closing of assigned work item, etc.
This will surely make it easier to evaluate individual accomplishments on a project and credit design elements to specific programmers. At present, there is no foolproof way to check what each programmer did or didn’t do to develop the product.
Hopefully, with this blockchain based system, companies will be able to recognize the individual efforts of each coder and reward them accordingly.
