Actually, the crazy things about patents is the you can't legally program it, even for your own use.
As a programmer, I am firmly against software patents. They are a burden only. How many programmers troll patents thinking, "I'll look for useful techniques so that I can license them in my program"? Even if you wanted to, you couldn't because there are millions of them. And if you start looking, you may get sued for wilful infringement if you forget about something you saw and start using it.
That aside from any arguments about the patentability of ideas rather than inventions. I would be 100% in favour of software patents if the implementation was covered (i.e. the source code). If I used a different implementation for the same idea, then the patent wouldn't hold. Of course such a patent would be useless in a world where software is covered by copyright.
As a programmer, I am firmly against software patents. They are a burden only. How many programmers troll patents thinking, "I'll look for useful techniques so that I can license them in my program"? Even if you wanted to, you couldn't because there are millions of them. And if you start looking, you may get sued for wilful infringement if you forget about something you saw and start using it.
That aside from any arguments about the patentability of ideas rather than inventions. I would be 100% in favour of software patents if the implementation was covered (i.e. the source code). If I used a different implementation for the same idea, then the patent wouldn't hold. Of course such a patent would be useless in a world where software is covered by copyright.