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Comment by coddingtonbear | Hacker News Reader

That might be true, but there are a variety of cases where we've decided to stop using a word in general in order to avoid causing undue distress; "slave" (i/r/t "master" and "slave") in a computing context is now generally always phrased in another way, for example.

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That's mostly self-contained on Github. Where busybodies have little else to do but open issues on projects in the name of social justice without ever contributing to the project itself in a meaningful manner. See: /r/gitinaction

The word "master" was also under fire not too long ago. They replaced it with "head". I'm honestly surprised a certain political group haven't jumped at the opportunity to get "head" replaced due to being too phalic.

[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3464182/Harvard-Univ...

> "slave" (i/r/t "master" and "slave") in a computing context is now generally always phrased in another way, for example

I need to educate myself. What do people use instead of "slave device" in computing?

Databases have been using master/replica lately, which, fortuitously is (usually) actually slightly more precise anyway, and so is strictly better in every way

The projects I've seen have gone with "leader/follower" https://github.com/django/django/commit/8a95b4fca793eeb8adce...

So, the solution is to literally use Führer instead of Master?

That’s a great choice, not only reprinting tons of literature, changing tons of code, but also choosing a Nazi analogy instead!

Every word triggers someone, society can’t be expected to adapt to anyone.

And I’ll continue to use Master/Slave, and continue to support the Sinter Klaas and Zwarte Piet tradition in the Netherlands.

No, it's literally to use 'leader'. Not a German word that has a rather specific meaning when used in languages outside of German (although I suppose it's at least somewhat loaded in Germany too).

It’s severely loaded in German, and how’d you teach students about "leader/follower" without translating that part?

There’s something like other languages, which you translate to for documentation or teaching purposes, which means the German material will either have only this one in english (which leads to everyone immediately realizing why), or just using Führer.

That’s not in any way solving the issue.

For every word, there is a context in which it is offensive. Just stop caring about that, instead of trying to do the impossible for no benefit.

I can't remember which, but I saw one project change to "primary/secondary".

"Servant". I prefer "slave".

That just gives me an intense urge to use master/slave all over the place.

I've went the opposite direction. I now describe the organization of a typical plantation in mid-19th century America as being run by a white leader with black followers doing the work.

That's the kind of absurd oversensitivity that opponents of trigger warnings are against.

Very much not generally nor always.

Source: I am a professional high-volume database guy doing this stuff since the mid 1990's and still deeply embedded with it now.

There are projects that have chosen other nouns, and they have ridden the wave of publicity around this, but by my estimation* more than 90% of database-related projects still use master/slave.

*as in I haven't done any formal record-keeping, nor will I.

Citation? I remember someone going around with PRs to change things and being roundly laughed out.

At least in the world of electrical engineering, you are quite incorrect. There are masters and slaves all over the place around here.

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