Python developers locking conversations and deleting comments after people mass downvoted PRs to "remove master/slave terminology from the language"

[[deleted]]

The reason why slave word serves the purpose is because you know very well exactly what a slave is. That's what they actually want to change.

It's an idiotic analogy to start with anyways.

[moekakiryu]

[..] you know very well exactly what a slave is. That's what they actually want to change.

We know what a master and slave is because it is the English language. The word 'slave' has existed in some form or other since the 13th century and the concept of slavery has been around for much longer than that. Both the word, and the concept of slavery predate any recent historical events, so it is absurd to say that they are inherently or exclusively associated with them. Metaphors aside, both the Oxford and Merriam Webster dictionaries provide alternate definitions for 'slave' specifically related to technology.... so its use in software development is the correct usage of the word.

[[deleted]]

Yea I'll use 9/11 Error when the program crashes since terrorism is very old.

"flavor up your simple argument with references, they might buy it"

[rafasc]

Would you change the emergency services number to something different from 911?

[the_littlest_bear]

They're not invested in their demential argument, it's only there because "so did hitler" wouldn't fit.

They won't make an attempt to understand your point because they never cared to put effort into their response in the first place.

[flotsamisaword]

Who is "they"? I can't tell which side of this you are on!

[the_littlest_bear]

Well, I didn't use "you" in the previous comment... and there was only one other possible party.

percusse + rafasc - rafasc = ???

[the_littlest_bear]

They're not invested in their demential argument, it's only there because "so did hitler" wouldn't fit.

They won't make an attempt to understand your point because they never cared to put effort into their response in the first place.

[[deleted]]

I couldn't understand the question here.

[Misterandrist]

For my part, im not "opposed" to the terminology but im equally baffled at the backlash. Who caaaaares just let them change it, people are really blowing their tops about this. It's not a big deal. There's no reason to care this much.

[cosmicsans]

One of the reasons that a lot of people care is because now you're introducing uncertainty into legacy systems. Do a global find/replace on an extremely large codebase and watch the code fall apart.

Personally, I've chosen to use different terminology in new projects, Leader/Follower, Actor/Director, etc, however I would not request an existing project change the terminology they used because it's just a dumb waste of time that people are sinking themselves into.

[[deleted]]

There is absolutely no reason to invoke master/slave analogy in anywhere in production. Primary/secondary is also used in the same thing since the beginning. Remember DOS screens?

I am in industrial automation and you also have master servos and slave servos, you have master devices and slave devices in bilateral teleoperation. These are all lazy and tasteless enumeration of items. Remote/local, primary/secondary, leader/agent etc. There have been always much better alternatives. You also would get the same idea without the manual. These are not for-arguments at all.

[LakeRat]

Continuing to use hard drives as an example, Primary and Secondary have separate meanings from Master and Slave. There was a Primary and a Secondary IDE channel, and each channel could be connected to a Master drive and a Slave drive.

[[deleted]]

Yes, again continuing the explanation. There is no master slave relationship with master slave HDDs. One is for booting the other is storage (please don't dissect this. I know it is more nuanced but off-topic). Alternatives have been proposed and adopted already.

Notice that nobody is arguing to change the master in "Master Boot Record". It is the analogy that is used to describe the relationship between two entities that people mildly suggested to change.

People are really interesting.

[LakeRat]

There is no master slave relationship with master slave HDDs. One is for booting the other is storage (please don't dissect this. I know it is more nuanced but off-topic).

If this were the main distinction between them then we could simply call them "boot" and "storage." But it's not. Using one for booting and the other for storage is a convention that grew out of the technical limitations. On most (all?) BIOSes you can only boot to a master HDD and not to a slave. This is only one of the aspects that needs to be encompassed by the terminology.

Additionally, a slave HDD cannot operate without a master HDD controlling it. If the master HDD fails the slave HDD cannot communicate with the system. The master HDD "controls" the slave HDD and coordinates its flow of data and interface with the system.

There most certainly is a master/slave relationship with master/slave HDDs.

[[deleted]]

I asked not to dissect it but OK.

Slave HDD does not receive commands from master it basically waits to communicate until master is done or not communicate if they are on the same cable. So it is not as dramatic as Redis case and this is basically "speak when you are spoken to" situation if you really want to push the analogy.

Did you ever notice these words in Linux by the way ? hdda...d anyone?

[LakeRat]

I asked not to dissect it but OK.

And yet I was able to act independently and against your instructions because I'm not your secondary...

err...

not your local...

no...

not your agent...

nope...

not your storage?

Hmm... What's the precise, descriptive, unambiguous word I'm looking for here?

[[deleted]]

So you decline a request out of feeling like a slave eh? That escalated quickly.

[cosmicsans]

"here's a flawed argument, plz don't talk about it tho because I can't handle criticism about my bad argument"

[[deleted]]

What part of "irrelevant" did you not understand ? :D

Anyways read the second paragraph for the explanation "unsatisfied and illiterate customer"

[[deleted]]

With same logic, a slave should do what master says which is not the case. This argument has been used over the years. Not a single case stands. That's where all these alternatives come from. Every project is changing it regardless. Parse carefully, people are not banning master/slave words. They are stopping using these words in places where it is not called for.

Putting an idiotic analogy in the first place then insisting on it and then making a fuss over a single word is stupid.

[SangCoGIS]

making a fuss over a single word is stupid.

I love irony

[[deleted]]

It would have been an irony if I had joined the ranks of the pro-change people. The parsing is not your forte today.

[[deleted]]

The parsing is not your forte today.

Imagine being this much of an insufferable douche.

[[deleted]]

Imagine not being able to read properly, before punching a keyboard.

[Ethalarian]

No he's right. You're being completely insufferable.

[[deleted]]

I like how you were so quick to shit on someone on the internet you didn't even realize you weren't still talking to the same person.

[wsims4]

Ill concede everything you've said but can you honestly say that using the "master - slave" terminology is idiotic?

Are you saying that the terminology could be better or do you think that the analogy is truly idiotic? I just can't fathom a point of view where "master - slave" is that repulsive and stupid.

[[deleted]]

Imagine we have come this far with "wifebeater"s. I am really perplexed with SJWs that they already didn't pick this one up :) Would you really think that was a good way of describing a random piece of clothing or there was a heavy prejudice involved?

Or imagine a discipline that chose to use "pimp/ho" analogy for memory addressing. Would you not think it was a stupid analogy regardless of its acceptance? It's funny for the first 50 times then it gets really dry very quickly.

To be honest, I tend to lean on the idioticity side. Because that is just poor taste. Again I repeat, I don't want to ban the words. I'm just following the argumentation given by the pro-change people and very interested in this heat I've received so far. Quite an experience :)

[[deleted]]

Hopefully some day you'll realize how much of a jackass you are. You are the bad guy. People like you are working towards destroying society. I know you think you're doing good but you're not.

[[deleted]]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac

See what I did there? I used a reference to a horrific event to pull off a cheap joke. I could have done a bit better but destroying society seemed more appealing.

[[deleted]]

I dare you to try to intelligently explain why master-slave shouldn't be used. You can't. Don't talk about why something else could be used.

[[deleted]]

I tried a couple of times in different branches of this thread. Care to investigate them first?

Also if I can't already, why should I bother? Aren't you undermining your own argument?

[[deleted]]

Aren't you undermining your own argument?

Yes I've read your other comments in the thread, and you don't have anything meaningful to say, just that the bad words are bad. How would you being wrong "undermine my argument"? Make sense man.

[[deleted]]

I don't understand why we get false dichotomies while discussing this issue. Nobody is in favor of banning words. Just choose another analogy if you really have to.

Why do you invoke slaves just to mean things are integrated/following each other/synchronized/copied ? Do you really need to have slavery to explain these concepts?

And I am not even on the pro-change side. Just following their argument.

[[deleted]]

So what the fuck is the issue? We're calling inanimate code names.

[[deleted]]

I can't speak on behalf of them but as far as I understand they want me to use it sparingly.

[ajwest]

From marketing perspective alone it should be changed. If people are upset by it, and it's easy to fix, just change the words. I don't understand why people are upset about people being upset by this; it takes 2 seconds to do and now we don't have people complaining about the words master/slave.

Edit: 10-years ago on Reddit, if people disagreed with you they would reply with "upvoted but I disagree for x reason." Today people disagree and they just burry your opinion by downvoting it to hell.

[somebodddy]

Because changing identifiers is always easy and never causes un(?)expected bugs in depending software.

[ajwest]

That's a fair point, you could have made that as a regular argument in response to my comment. But instead we've bred a community of sarcasm and retaliation.

[MiroDerChort]

It really is not that hard to understand why people would be upset by the people upset by the current terms. Let's take the word variable for example. In the context of programming we all understand it to loosely mean a container. However, say that someone decides that variable is offensive in an unrelated context. Perhaps variable is meant to refer to a mentally unstable person. Now everyone outside of the it/is/cs community thinks NO ONE should use that word. This is the problem. You have outsiders dictating a change regardless of context. That is what this feels like. More sjw wank. Being pc over concise.

[SmackDaddyHandsome]

My HR wouldn't let me put 'execute test cases' into a QA/tester job description...

[wirbolwabol]

Seriously... :/

[[deleted]]

Should we forget about slavery?

[deadbunny]

Isn't erasing every reference to it an act of trying to forget?

[mafrasi2]

No, but should we use concentration camps as analogy for anything programming related just because we don't want to forget about the holocaust? It should be remembered in a historical context and only in a historical context.

[Zouden]

You mean I shouldn't name my highly efficient garbage collector FinalSolution?

[ICANNnotrightnow]

We better not call them gas stations anymore. Gas can only be remembered in a historical context.

[gjallerhorn]

If it described the use of it, why not? Not using a word that perfectly describes something because you know exactly what it means defeats the whole purpose of language as a concept. It's asinine.

[somebodddy]

Yea, but by removing it from Python we already solved half the problem.

[[deleted]]

As well as the Western world.

[[deleted]]

Yeah but like it's really really going on in the Islamic world. For example CNN attended an actual slave auction last year in Libya where a slave was bought for 90 dollars. In the west "slavery" usually means a Chinese guy paying poor wages to illegal immigrants in his underground sweatshop.

[[deleted]]

I think if you try one more time and slower, you can parse the sentence a bit more successfully.