* Renaming master/slave to central/peripheral
* Avoiding gender in code comments and documentation, e.g. "When user clicks, log him out" to "When user clicks, log them out".
* Being able to disable animations globally, for epileptic users.
In my eyes it is simply a factual description of an architecture: the master gives commands, the slave obeys. The slave doesn't act without permission from the master and only speaks when spoken to. I wish no such thing for any human, but it describes a great architecture for software and hardware.
The real point here is that slave has a lot of meanings, currently and throughout history, and thus has a lot of baggage. A slave is not just someone/something that obeys or only speaks when spoken to. A slave is owned by its master. A slave is entirely under the domination of the master. That doesn't really map cleanly on to replication. A master database doesn't really own or control the slave database; it just provides a log of actions performed against it that the slave needs to mimic.
As I understand history, the master/slave metaphor has been used for a long time in technology (e.g., in machinery and photography), well before computers or software, but we have better terminology. Many organizations use primary/replica or even just master/replica.
Using replica instead of slave seems like an obvious win. It's more precise and clear, and it avoids the baggage. It's also more intuitive when you're using the slave DB for reporting, i.e., "read replica" makes more sense to me than "read slave". Maybe that's just me. I don't see a downside to using replica.
Perhaps not the best reference, but this Wikipedia page provides some examples as well as some info on the appropriateness of use that I found interesting:
EDIT: Not that you're arguing otherwise, I'm just restating my point more succinctly and abstractly.
"Replica" is actually a lot more meaningful than "slave" in terms of databases.
Even the old telnet protocol politely and consensually negotiates with will/won't/do/don't, and it's not protocolly correct for a server to rape a client, who historians then romanticize as a mistress.
Another common metaphor that I find cognitively dissonant is calling the relationships between nodes in a tree "parent" and "child", since all humans have exactly two biological parents, but all tree nodes have only one parent.
https://www.quora.com/Can-a-binary-tree-node-have-multiple-p...
Off top of head
A Button can be inside a Panel, but not a subclass of Panel.
A Button can be a subclass of Control, but not inside a Control.
Having two types of parents (view and class) is different that having two parents (mommy and daddy).
I'm a white male and even I can read the tone-deafness in master/slave. Modeling computer architecture names on one of the great crimes against humanity is not a great naming convention, I'm sure you can agree.
When you hear about a master/slave relationship or a male/female connector, you know immediately what is being described, which is pretty good for a method of communication. If you are unable to interpret words based on their context, I'm inclined to believe it's not the language that's the problem. I doubt that's the case though, I think these manufactured outcries are attempts at social engineering and moves in a game of power (controlling language->discourse->thought).
I'm totally with you. Just wanted to contribute to the thread by leaving this classic here for anyone who wants visions of (trigger warning!) ending daemon life:
Doom as a tool for system administration:
Agreed that is awful! But none of your examples are!
>* Renaming master/slave to central/peripheral
Yes, please go and explain to people in the BDSM scene why their preferences are considered inappropriate and discriminatory. Or should the whole world shape around the sensibilities of US slavery? That's a bit US-centric, no?
>Avoiding gender in code comments and documentation, e.g. "When user clicks, log him out" to "When user clicks, log them out".
Depends on the context. What if it's a woman's magazine website and the comment reads 'log her out'? It sounds a bit hard for all economic activities to not have target audiences. What are we gonna do with all these marketeers then? How would they even establish a focus group?
Off course, that would suggest they are just ordinary people, and not some evil immoral conspiracy against a specific gender.
>Being able to disable animations globally, for epileptic users.
That's not how epilepsy works at all -- these sort of misconceptions are actually the things they are actively fighting _against_.
For some reason, every _constructive_ attempt of making people treat each other better, brings out the worst kind of people that like vultures jump onto any opportunity to find moral laws they can use to feel superior to other people. A sort of moral übermensch (yeah gender neutral phrasing!) if you will. In the bible they are referred to as Pharisees. The monsters that play king of the hill in the moral center. "No true Scotsman" would be an other expression that comes to mind.
The clearly homophobic comments are horrible! Yet it's so easy to tell the difference between those comments and your examples. And you would be able to tell the differences as well, if you your intentions were even in the slightest way honorable.
These kinds of knee-jerk reactions from people in the industry are exactly why we have to try consciously to remove these biases. Listen to the people who are saying these things make them uncomfortable, and try to work with them on a solution that's inclusive to all, instead of dismissing it out of hand, like most the commenters here are doing.