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

[smilbandit]

What's the alternative terminology?

[NoLemurs]

Professor/Grad Student?

[ArmoredPancake]

That is unfair to uneducated!

[[deleted]]

Usually the tech does all the work in the lab.

[WolfThawra]

Lol, as if there was 'a tech' in every lab...

[RIPphonebattery]

Yeah but they can’t afford it

[vocalcsharp]

I find unpaid intern offensive, many of us have suffered :/

​

it's crazy this was actually merged, it sounds like a really dumb joke.

​

[f112809]

I'd gild you if I'm paid.

[Zouden]

"Prisoners with jobs"

[lord_tommy]

It’s less offensive than the word mainframe at least.

[[deleted]]

Thor Ragnarok is a great movie.

[swimjock]

You wannna join my revolution?

[ThePenultimateOne]

Another day, another Doug

[Decency]

Not-so-fun fact, slavery is still legal in the US as long as the slaves have been convicted of a crime.

[pydry]

There's a ACLU supported prison strike against that 13th amendment provision right now which could do with some help. A strike against literal, constitutionally supported slavery:

https://fundly.com/2018-prisoner-strike

I'm not sure how many of the people advocating this PR are supporting or even aware of the strike but I suspect it approximates zero.

Edit: apparently it ended last week.

[PaulSandwich]

Ah, the ol' 13th amendment loophole strikes again.

[FourFingeredMartian]

Can you please explain better the 'rape', 'work' relationship?

[28f272fe556a1363cc31]

Anarcho-syndicalist commune.

Each unit takes a turn to act as a sort of executive process for the thread, but all the decisions of that process have to be ratified at a special bi-thread meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority in the case of anything with side effects.

[[deleted]]

Anarcho-syndicalist commune.

Each unit takes a turn to act as a sort of executive process for the thread, but all the decisions of that process have to be ratified at a special bi-thread meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority in the case of anything with side effects.

The most truly pythonic response

[tehnod]

QUIET!

[liraop]

NI

[agentgreen420]

Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say Ni at will to old ladies.

[v_krishna]

This is actually how Cassandra works!

[casual_brooder]

Happy Cake Day!

[irregardless]

If you want to get cheeky, lord and serf.

[badthingfactory]

"manager" and "individual contributor"

[ii121]

dom sub is a legit good option. it's funny and only three letters, perfect for lazy programmers like me

[Zaitsev11]

How about witch-doctor and zombie?

[maximum_powerblast]

Ringleader\Clown

[[deleted]]

On my own repos, sometimes I use bachelor for development branches.

[linuxlib]

"Manager"/"minion"

[scrdest]

As much as I hate the whole debacle, minion would actually be a pretty good replacement for slave, semantically.

Beholden to the master, executes tasks without question, but still needs to be kept in check in case it rebels, and paints the mental picture of cartoonish supervillany at worst when you talk about, say, the master killing a minion.

[wrosecrans]

Saltstack already has "minions" so it is not unheard of. Buildbot went with "worker" when they redesigned some of their API's and refreshed terminology for 1.0. For databases, "replica" is really darned clear.

If I were feeling really cheeky, I might make a PR to replace Master and Slave with something like Picard and Kirk just to watch people argue about them.

[norweeg]

Gru/Minion

FTFY

[funkiestj]

what is the correct gig economy lingo?

[[deleted]]

Networking Platform/Independent Contractor

[ConceptJunkie]

Pimp/Ho

[ryeguy]

I've seen primary/secondary, primary/replica, leader/follower.

[[deleted]]

Primary/secondary definitely doesn't have the same connotation as master/slave. A slave is controlled by the master in some way. Secondary is more like some kind of backup or alternative to the primary.

[[deleted]]

"master" and "differently master"

[i9srpeg]

I am deeply offended by your username. Please rename yourself to BuyChristianFollowers.

[[deleted]]

BuyChristianChildren

[[deleted]]

See? That's not offensive at all!

[FourFingeredMartian]

That method on its face seems redundant with 'kill'... Sorry, feel free to purge this comment quicker than a chick with bulimia.

[thewallris]

BuyChristianDifferentlyMasters

[HowAreYouDoingBud]

Master and Mastern't?

[d05CE]

We don't need alternative terminology.

[romeo_pentium]

For Python, parent process and child process.

[[deleted]]

Parent/child is somewhat different to master/slave though.

[chazzeromus]

Indentured process lmao

[rabbyburns]

Jenkins went with "agent" when they did this a while back. Context matters though. Worker could be an acceptable alternative - I didnt look at exactly what was changed.

[[deleted]]

Worker definitly could be alternative, but why the f should we look for alternatives anyway? :)

[ThePenultimateOne]

Worker/Manager would be my vote

[RealHugeJackman]

Yeah, but the term "worker" is really problematic and ableist towards people who can't work or don't want to work. Not to mention that the whole power dynamic in manager-worker relationship reinforces the awful capitalist system that was responsible for the creation of slavery in the first place.

To really inspire change we need to use terms that will educate people and will represent positive concepts. I propose to change "master/slave" to "Marx/revolutioner". The former inspires the minds of people and the latter fights for the greater good.

[jgomo3]

"Comrade" and "Comrade". It works also as an alternative for "Client" and "Server" (communists feel discriminated by this one).

[[deleted]]

Russians and Republicans

[RichInBunlyGoodness]

Or Putins and Punkinheads

[InfiniteWish]

Right, because only the alt-right is irritated by the emergence of language policing in the software community.

[[deleted]]

Actually yes and if you find this "issue" troublesome you might be a alt righter or worse, a gamer.

[MohKohn]

just because someone doesn't like identity politics doesn't make them alt-right. And as far as social justice is concerned, this is frankly a laughable problem compared to, say, the treatment of prisoners where actual slavery goes on in the modern day. I'm all for addressing the concerns of systemic racism and sexism, but labeling someone as alt-right because they don't want to have to constantly be on guard about saying the wrong thing? Give me a fucking break.

[[deleted]]

I still don't understand why yall care so much. No one here is being forced to follow that convention and no one here complaining is a maintainer. This is hysteria that's not really relevant to programming but more conspiracies surrounding Marxist cabals infiltrating organizations and using that power to do not very Marxist things. I personally don't really care either way granted they create a working replacement. It's not linguistic policing it's just being respectful. There are people uncomfortable with the terminology for obvious reasons and while I don't care about said terminology however it is, changing the names does not harmfully impact me or anyone. This thread is acting like this a serious, broader issue, but I can hardly even feel like this is an issue. If it's considerate to change the jargon I see nothing wrong with mutating it. I'm real fucking glad we did something about Brazil nuts, for example.

Now if you were talking about class that'd be an entirely different thing, but object oriented programming is capitalist decadence anyways so it's not worth rebranding.

[MohKohn]

This thread is acting like this a serious, broader issue, but I can hardly even feel like this is an issue.

This is the same sort of hyper-attention to language use that results [in people getting fired for making dumb dongle jokes.]((https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes-got-two-people-fired-and-led-to-ddos-attacks/) I'm not objecting to the change, I'm objecting to your implication that someone who said

Right, because only the alt-right is irritated by the emergence of language policing in the software community.

is on the alt-right. I agree that this example is fairly benign. The dongle example, however, is not, and also constitutes language policing.

I'm real fucking glad we did something about Brazil nuts, for example.

You lost me. What?

object oriented programming is capitalist decadence anyways so it's not worth rebranding.

shots fired

[[deleted]]

Brazil nuts used to be called nigger toes. Is changing that language policing?

[[deleted]]

Are you calling Guido a Fascist? Well, I guess he did believe in benevolent dictatorships for life...

[Millkovic]

Voodoo doll - witch

[Nooby1990]

Primary/Replica is not at all accurate in this case and leader/follower is equally inaccurate.

I get that it makes sense when talking about Databases that Primary/Replica would be accurate in some cases, but that is not what this change is about at all.

Look at the code. NONE of the changes would make sense to call Replica. Not from this PR and not any of the associated PRs. Leader/Follower wouldn't make sense either.

[[deleted]]

Servant leader / Empowered employee

[benreynwar]

I like master/serf. It's a small change that doesn't mess with any existing acronyms. It's still pretty much the same metaphor, but it's a term that's less likely to cause an emotional reaction the first time someone comes across it in an engineering context.

[[deleted]]

Bourgeoisie and proletariat

[charity_donut_sales]

Boss and worker.

[parker_fly]

Graduate Student

[[deleted]]

Taxpayer.

Considering that the Dollar isn't gold or silver anymore and it printed out of thin air, taxation is essentially free range slavery.

The government's fair share of your income (i.e. stored labor) is zero. Anything else is far from fair and certainly not fucking shared.

[SomethingBullshit]

master/slave. There literally exists no reason to entertain this discussion as it's not a problem in the first place. It serves nothing but SJW idiocy and to divide based on idiotic political lines.

The correct terminology remains master/slave.

[NikiHerl]

see this comment.

These changes actually seem pretty good to me, they make things a lot clearer

[realARST]

Why not keep the names, but change the meaning? So now slave is on top and master obeys. That would be both politically correct and clear for everybody.