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If "Master/Slave" terminology in computing sounds bad now, why not change it to "Dom/Sub"? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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It sounds way less offensive to those who decry the original terminology's problematic roots but still keeps its meaning intact.

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[–] 42 points 2 years ago (20 children)

It only sounds bad to the fringest of the fringe that's deceivingly loud on twitter. Good luck trying to find even one real person thinking those terms should be changed. This kind of stuff is why people vote for Trump.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    It was changed a while ago, it's primary and secondary now. It's been that way for a decade+ at this point.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Not every domain though. I still see master/slave in every relevant datasheets that I read, and I've never seen primary/secondary in newer datasheets.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's interesting, because everything I run into now has primary/secondary or main and secondary. I've not seen master and slave for a good 5 years now, sure older stuff still carries it but most that new has swapped over.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    I'd like it to be changed because I don't like saying "is the slave working? Did you check? To my black employees.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Maybe its just the way you say it.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I say it with a hard R

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Harder R if you want the SlaveR to whip the SlaveE :'D

    Also just kidding. I really really dont understand a lot of the sensitivity and sentiment against words. Words are NOT Violence as long as you agree to be civil and not militant.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    It's not obvious to realize this, but the luxury of thinking words are neutral is a privilege.

    Think of it this way. If 5% of the time, when a person said "howdy", they punched you in the face. You would be very wary of anyone saying howdy. Just in case. Now imagine having to live on edge like that 24/7. It wears you down. It's exhausting.

    Well, it costs me nothing to choose a different word besides howdy. And for that cost of $0 I can make someone else's life less anxious. I know how much anxiety sucks because I'm basically made out of it. So I'm going to do what I can to put other people at ease.

    Now obviously black people know that the IT term master and slave are not about them. But they are also conditioned by society that, some small % of the time when those words come up, things go very poorly for them. So yeah, I would be twitchy about it too. Even if my rational mind knew it was silly.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I think very few people mind changing it, and a few people want it changed, so it's slowly shifting across various use cases. I've only discussed the change from master/slave terminology with one person that affirmatively supported the change, and they didn't know that there's still slavery in the world today.

    I don't know what to make of that, other than to say ending human slavery ought to be a higher priority than ending references to it.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think very few people mind changing it

    I doubt that. Do you know how many system configurations depend on these keywords? Do you have any idea how many hours of work and system outages this would cause?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I've seen a few projects rename during major version upgrades, when everyone has to read the release notes and make changes, anyways.

    Plenty of old deployed systems may continue using master/slave terminology, and of course some projects will stick to that language even decades in the future, but it was once more prevalent than it is now, and that declining trend looks like it will continue.

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