On banning racial terms in programming

I think the money quote is "By banning those words, you’re giving them the meaning you don’t want them to have." When I use "master/slave", it's not because I'm an insensitive asshole, it's because it has a distinct, technical meaning that has nothing to do with the topic you might think it does.

And thus it comes down to, "I have chosen for that word to have this particular meaning (and only that meaning), which I find offensive, therefore please don't use it anymore.", knowing full well that the speaker meant no offense when they were discussing the new drive layout. I'm not completely unsympathetic, but I sometimes feel the sympathy only goes one way.

hey, if it‘s just technical, why not switch to ,nazi‘ and ,jew‘ for strictly technical uses! If you only talk technical context, who should have the right to be offended, right?

It's not about intention. Nobody believes that the words "master" and "slave" are intended to cause racial stress in a technical context -- but that's not the point. The point is that these words do not exist in a vacuum, and for many people words like "master" and "slave" do in fact evoke historically-grounded feelings of discomfort, even when that isn't the intent.

When someone says "hey, I feel hurt when you use that term", the correct response (imo) is to do your best to stop using the term. It's a small sacrifice to make other people feel safer, and that's absolutely worth it.

Software engineering is undergoing a (nother) cultural change. More people than ever before are engineers and are participating in its culture, bringing their own perspectives and experiences with them. Consequently, a lot more people are weighing in on what is and isn't acceptable. This is good! Diversity breeds strength, and while it can be tumultuous it's always worth it.

Language changes too. There are all kinds of words we used to use that, for one reason or another, we just don't use anymore. And if you happen to use one, reactions range from "woof what an anachronism" to "yikes that's bigoted".

> I'm not completely unsympathetic, but I sometimes feel the sympathy only goes one way.

Yeah I can understand. But I think the asymmetry is because the issue itself is asymmetrical. On one hand it feels like busy work to go and change master/slave to primary/secondary or whatever, and it can also feel a little insulting to be accused of racism (or at least insensitivity or ignorance) for using those terms when some of them are more or less terms of art.

On the other, at least master/slave has some implications that are pretty disgusting. They're not engineering terms. They're terms that invoke some of the most brutal human regimes in history. They've been reappropriated rather clumsily to represent a controller/controllee relationship, but make no mistake: they refer specifically to a power structure that gave one human being complete dominion over another -- and often that dominion was misused to an extreme, violent degree.

So that's where the asymmetry comes from. Essentially it's a couple of sed commands vs. casually invoking (and thus encoding into our software) a history of crushing oppression.

Thing with making lists is they get outdated and somebody has to decide when to change them. Euphemisms are constantly turning into slurs and slurs into curse words.