Can anyone find me someone who actually gets offended by this?
(And doesn't write a column for the Guardian or make money out of claiming offence everywhere).
(And doesn't write a column for the Guardian or make money out of claiming offence everywhere).
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
I can't change how I was born or the context of the stereotypes I live within. I can control how aware I am of that and shape my behavior in response.
I've been outspoken about this stuff for quite some time. I tend to be someone people look to as a peer leader as well, no matter my title, largely because I am willing to be outspoken. I've never been criticized over it. I've been repeatedly praised for it.
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
> "master" as in e.g. "master recording". Perhaps you could say the original, but viewed from the production process perspective.
— https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441
The idea that it is related to master/slave was guesswork based on the relation between Git and BitKeeper. But Git doesn’t have slaves and the guess was wrong.
https://mobile.twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272958618124595201
https://mobile.twitter.com/localheinz/status/127330224500268...
Again, I wouldn’t blame anyone for following use which is common in the field. What disappoints me is that some people are so strongly opposed to using more accurate terms when they’re not even being asked to do the small amount of work. Maybe this is innocent, maybe it’s not, we could fix it now and never have to spend time on this conversation again.
> What disappoints me is that some people are so strongly opposed to using more accurate terms when they’re not even being asked to do the small amount of work.
> we could fix it now and never have to spend time on this conversation again.
I really hate this perception that changing master to main is easy. There’s 15 years of documentation out there that uses master. If it’s anything like other legacy documentation, it’ll take another ten years for that documentation to fall out of use.
In the meantime, there’s tonnes of young, inexperienced developers who will get stuck on this. Haven’t you ever seen a junior developer panic, think they are screwing up, and question their self-worth because they feel like they can’t even follow simple step-by-step instructions, when the problem is the documentation they are following is wrong?
The right way of doing this would be to coördinate via the main Git project and have a plan for what to do with all the existing documentation out there. As it stands, people unilaterally charged forward with it thoughtlessly, and are going to cause a great deal of practical pain for inexperienced developers, many of whom will be black. You really think triggering imposter syndrome in them is harmless?
There'll always be another word or someone else offended by things of zero consequence. Find it astonishing if you truly believe this is last word that needs to be "fixed".
It's perpetually tiring.
I wouldn't be opposed to this if I thought this was the end of it.
Obviously the history of slavery isn't exactly a happy topic regardless of nationality, but it may not necessarily have the racial tinge to it in other cultures.
And the word "slave" in English refers to slavery throughout history and in various cultures, anyway, including slavery that still exists today, "wage slavery", etc.
Master and slave in this context has nothing to do with human slavery.
I agree with all of this. I'm sure if I were to work with master/slave systems for a while the connotation to me would change from the historical one to the technical. However even then, if I communicate with someone outside of technical people, it will carry the slavery connotation to them.
A while ago I had a similar issue when trying to explain male and female connectors to a friend. When she heard me use the terminology she thought I was joking, and I had to show her the wikipedia article and connectors on amazon. In that case it was harmless, but I could imagine the same scenario happening when trying to explain master/slave terminology to a colored person, and it coming off as an offensive joke.
So should the BDSM community stop using the terms master and slave, or it's okay in that context but not in a technology context? Curious if you have a double standard or if you'll change your mind.
Edit to add: I truly hope you answer the BDSM question instead of the likely avoidance so you can maintain an irrational position.
You really ought to look into a bit more history than what you got taught in school as slavery has gone on since as far as civilization and is in no way unique to the US. Slavery still goes on today and changing the terminology has done nothing to help that in any way.
(Is your skin colour relevant to your answer in any way? I have no idea why you included that)
>Newspeak contains no negative terms. For example, the only way to express the meaning of “bad” is through the word “ungood.”
I'm aware slavery exists in other contexts and continues. In this case, I was trying to point out the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "slave". I imagine other US born devs might think similarly. I doubt this would do anything to solve slavery, but it would make me more comfortable.
> Is your skin colour relevant to your answer in any way? I have no idea why you included that
Since this is a racially charged topic, I assume the opinion of someone of color would hold more weight. I wanted to make my background clear so you wouldn't be guessing.
So you expect me to treat you differently based on revealing your skin colour?
My personal opinion is that such an attitude will do far more harm to racial relations than the use of master / slave in technical documentation. We should be looking to make skin colour as irrelevant as eye colour. You don't get there by bringing up skin colour at every opportunity.
This is a harmful idea.
Do you think an anti-vaxxer's opinion should hold more weight because she's a mother?
The atlantic slave trade had unique characteristics that make it quite distinct from what's happened during Rome or the Czars. It also was only a couple generations ago. The legacy of slavery remains a very real force across all the prior slave colonies in the Americas.
There's always been murderers, but we don't use that as a thought ending cliche to dismiss the idea that we should try to prevent murders. We don't ignore the unique horrors of someone like Jeffrey Dahmer just because other murders existed.
Symbols and terminology matter. No changing the terms won't by itself eliminate ongoing slavery in the world. But it does shift the window of how people view things.
In my generation, the purge of the f word and using gay as a pejorative was only a few years ahead of legal acceptance of gay marriage.
Changing the terms won't solve the problem, but it is moving in the right direction.
Removing uncomfortable and provocative language seems like a mistake but I understand that its my privilege to hold this position. I can't think of a word that makes me uncomfortable enough to ask for its removal.
I agree with your point, and master/slave being replaced with much more descriptive terms depending on context will be a boon long term I believe. I think CircuitPython is using terms such as “input/listener” which more accurately describes the circuit.
Other pairings like “generator/consumer” also make the relationship more clear when previously it was all lumped under “master/slave”
I'm a bit more puzzled by the blacklist/whitelist change. I've literally never once heard of anyone having a problem with this. But, if there is an equally descriptive alternative, I'd love to hear it.
i think mostly it's millennial and below just wanting to change "something" that they have control over. i see how millennial and below are feeling the "squeeze" of the society that they wanted to not be apart of (renting instead of owning, freelancing instead of corporate job, code camps instead of college) and now realize that they completely screwed themselves.
this whole movement is there way of lashing back and trying to have a voice. personally i (and probably most Gen Xers and above) could care less which is why there isn't really any "push back" not to go along.
They are not going to say that publicly on the internet, as they expect the alt-right to rain fire and death threats on them if they come out in public.