Python: Avoid master/slave terms
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Python: Avoid master/slave terms
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Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#2As a commenter noted, stones can hurt people too. But, that's not what people think of first when they hear the word stone. On the other hand, if you know the word slave, you know that the first meaning brings up some sad history. It's surprising that in the context of a programming language discussion, a programming language where exact syntax and meaning matters, that this change wouldn't be accepted more easily.
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#3the motivation behind this is bullshit
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#4It doesn't cost me anything, the new terms are perfectly clear and sufficient, and hopefully the new language causes less duress for other people.
This discussion always seems to go bad, but changes like this are innocuous to the language and a bonus for people. Totally fine!
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#5As a commenter noted, stones can hurt people too. But, that's not what people think of first when they hear the word stone. On the other hand, if you know the word slave, you know that the first meaning brings up some sad history. It's surprising that in the context of a programming language discussion, a programming language where exact syntax and meaning matters, that this change wouldn't be accepted more easily.
Depends if you are a native speaker or not I guess.
My first contact with "master" and "slave" were IDE drives.
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#6I'm quite taken aback by the vitriol in those comments.
Programs are meant to be read by humans, and language/terminology has a huge impact. If there are cost-less replacements to words that are easy to adopt, why not adopt them? These changes are beneficial to the community, don't hurt the language, and are cheap to adopt in many cases anyway.
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#7As a commenter noted, stones can hurt people too. But, that's not what people think of first when they hear the word stone. On the other hand, if you know the word slave, you know that the first meaning brings up some sad history. It's surprising that in the context of a programming language discussion, a programming language where exact syntax and meaning matters, that this change wouldn't be accepted more easily.
Depends if you are a native speaker or not I guess. My first contact with "master" and "slave" were IDE drives.
It's an interesting point. I'm all for languages evolving as they do. I still would say that the "first" meaning of slave would be known to a majority of people as "an enslaved person." For that reason, it seems like using that term should be avoided and corrected.
In the same vein, even if a small number of people created an alternative meaning that was offensive for a term, I wouldn't think that particular word should be changed/removed just because of that minority of usage.
When the first and most common usage has an ugly history that impacts real people, that seems like a good candidate for an alternative term.
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#8An interesting other side of the coin here: Emily Wilson, in her recent translation of The Odyssey made it a point to call the slaves in Odysseus' house slaves. In other translations, this idea was glossed over, the people called different things, avoiding the term. Wilson instead aimed to stay truer to the culture the work was written in, rather than appealing to contemporary ideals, or what have you.
It makes sense, though, with this context as well. The issue at hand is calling things what they in fact are. In the Odyssey, there is a source text and culture, where persons who were slaves were called such. In codebases, however, we are working with abstract concepts in the first. There is no necessary historical reason to maintain certain language. Abstract concepts are such because they do not exist out in the world, and so have no "actual" name.
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#9A better read than what is found at github can be found here.
Re: Python: Avoid master/slave terms
#10I was surprised at just how comically angry people were over this. I can kind of understand their arguments against a trend of being too change-happy and over-correcting, but these things really should be considered case-by-case, not on whether it's part of a trend. It's an opportunity to use more descriptive terms, with being less insensitive as a bonus, and neither of these warrants the level of hate that's been coming out.
Really, "master" and "slave" are pretty overused in tech for situations where it only kind of makes sense if you squint. There are a couple of examples of this. For databases, "master" and "slave" doesn't accurately describe the relationship, its more like "original" and "copy". For git, "master" as a name doesn't really make sense either since it implies it's master of something, when "main" or "primary" is closer to the truth.
I also remember seeing "dom" and "sub" being suggested somewhere, and even if it was a joke I'm all for it.