"can we please work to discontinue using 'master' and 'slave' to describe things in computer science and electronics"
This is not an argument, thus it does not require a counter argument. This is a silly request, with no justification. Nothing more.
This is not an argument, thus it does not require a counter argument. This is a silly request, with no justification. Nothing more.
Imagine if one were to insist on referring to “male” and “female” connectors as “cocks” and “fuckholes”.
This is not a hill worth dying on.
I wouldn’t use “genocide” to describe a technical concept even though it’s been over a century since the US has taken part in one.
Why not error on the side of decency?
I have my own set of words that I need to be careful with if I want to err on the side of decency. You almost assuredly use some of them as if there was nothing offensive about them. To you, there isn't. I accept that. I'd be grateful if you reciprocated, instead of trying to impose your own cultural norms on me, thank you in advance.
If you actually want to be decent, then that means taking global perspectives into account if your communication is to a global audience.
If I posted a tweet saying that my company is looking for “refugees from big tech”, that would be insensitive even though there aren’t refugees fleeing the US. Saying that the issue of refugees is not sensitive in my local cultural scope is not an excuse if the audience for my communication was larger than that.
Given the burnout rate and the pace of the tech world, it's an apt (and even meaningful) description of the state of working in that industry.
To presume/take offence at every single word is absolutely silly.
"servus" historically meant servant as well as slave though, iirc. imo etymology is less important than the current emotional valence of words, though. nobody's thinking of Slavic people being slurred by the word "slave" unless they dive into Merriam-Webster.
Yet! Nobody thought about "master" being offensive either. But with enough activism, anything is possible. I eagerly await people trying to cancel "Masters" degree because it implies less credentialed people should be slaves to more credentialed ones.
Would you get behind a movement to remove the term 'beat' from our lexicon?
As in 'Tampa beats Kansas 31-9'
https://www.reddit.com/r/kubernetes/comments/o4h1fq/using_go...
What irks people is the presumption that the entire world (or at least the entire Anglosphere) should learn American history and then alter their use of language to conform to it. And that it ends up being a kind of linguistic annexation of the Internet where everybody has to make an effort to not offend Americans but Americans make little effort to not offend the rest of the world.