5 ms·

I hope you are trolling. Would more women in tech be good? Of course! However there is some crazy SJW stuff going on at the moment in a lot of projects. People

I hope you are trolling. Would more women in tech be good? Of course! However there is some crazy SJW stuff going on at the moment in a lot of projects. People pushing for things like Master/Slave to be renamed to Leader/Follower. Wanting things like man (as in the man command on Linux) renamed to something non-gender-based. I mean fucking come on. I am all for a more inclusive environment but some things are just stupid and it is getting a little crazy in place.

rhodysurf 11y ago
Yeah the master/slave thing pisses me off. They are words in the dictionary used to describe something and that is all.
- untothebreach 11y ago
  Except that people's experience of words doesn't come from the dictionary. Words aren't experienced in a vacuum, people assign different meanings to words based on their own experiences. To some of us, "master/slave" is just a phrase to describe an architecture. To others of us, it has historical connotations that makes it inappropriate.
  - rewqfdsa 11y ago
    Concepts don't stop existing merely because you ban the words used to refer to them. Masters and slaves have always existed in human history and will probably always exist. When we use the terms in software, we draw a metaphor from this experience. There's nothing wrong with that.
    - untothebreach 11y ago
      I don't see where anyone has proposed we "ban" any words at all. What I see are people who suggest that we use a different set of words, that accomplish the same ends as "master/slave," except with words that aren't associated with slavery. > "Masters and slaves have always existed in human history and will probably always exist" I don't understand this argument. I'm not saying your statement is wrong, but I fail to see how this is a justification for using the words in a technical context.
      - rewqfdsa 11y ago
        I don't accept that we can't use words that accurately describe a concept merely because some people find that concept unpleasant.
        untothebreach 11y ago
        Really? Slavery is "unpleasant?" Going to the dentist is "unpleasant." The enslavement of an entire race of people goes quite a ways beyond "unpleasant."
        AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        > The enslavement of an entire race of people goes quite a ways beyond "unpleasant." Absolutely. But what we're talking about isn't racial. The last time I worked on a master/slave setup (I forget whether we used those terms), the "master" and "slave" were of the same race. In fact, the slave could become the master, and the master could become the slave. You may tell me that we're talking about the words, and I suppose that's true. But the words are also used for same-race slavery, so the words are not inherently about a racially-charged situation either.
  - rhodysurf 11y ago
    Okay but that doesn't mean the word stops existing. My point is that master and slave are general terms, not specific to one group of people. This is a slippery slope to go down.
    - untothebreach 11y ago
      Sure it's a slippery slope, but let's think about this from the perspective of an open-source project (where I most see this issue debated). If a goal of yours is to attract as many people to contribute to your project as possible, then it only makes sense to avoid using terms that might discourage others by making them uncomfortable, at least in the context of the project (issue trackers, documentation, etc). Saying, "well those words are defined as ___ in the dictionary" doesn't change the fact that you are losing potential contributors. Especially when there are other terms that work just as well, it only makes sense to avoid potentially problematic ones. I'm not going to say you (as an individual) should stop using those words. That is your business, not mine, and if you run into any consequences of using specific words, that is also your business.
      - rhodysurf 11y ago
        By this thinking any word without context can cause outrage.
        untothebreach 11y ago
        All I'm saying, is if you recognize that a word is potentially costing you contributors, why wouldn't you change it if there is another word that is just as good? I'm just trying to be practical, not trying to force PC-think down anyone's throat.
        rhodysurf 11y ago
        Right, but in this case master slave often describes the relationship between computer devices better than anything else. The slave device has no choice of what to do other than what a master device sends it. Leader and follower doest quite capture that as well in my mind.
bajsejohannes 11y ago
I would certainly welcome changing master/slave to leader/follower. It's no less clear, and it doesn't associate my software with something I'm deeply against. People might have different reactions to this thing so what's a stupid change to you might be a crucial change to someone else. (I agree that changing man is a little silly as it's obviously short for manual)
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  How about kill(2)? Why does the POSIX committee endorse murder?
  - tangent128 11y ago
    "kill" as a term for the forcible cessation of life carries no baggage tying it to historical atrocities. It can and is used to refer to deaths of stars, bacteria, plants, abstract concepts, and humans, without any connotation that these deaths carry equivalent moral weight. genocide(2), on the other hand, would be in very poor taste.
- kbenson 11y ago
  I don't know, to me master/slave embodies teh relationship of the devices better than leader/follower, and also has less alternate meanings when viewed as a verb to confuse what is going on. Is the leader "out front"? Is the leader "first"? Is the follower doing the same thing, but delayed in some manner (which doesn't fit standby situations very well). A master controls. A slave is controlled. Additionally, I think it's worth looking at the issue with a wider perspective. Slavery is bad, but really what most people in the west think of when thinking of slavery is racial slavery, which is a more recent issue (at least at scale), and is a much more pernicious problem,since it's not really slavery that was the base problem, but extreme racism. Historically slaves could be anyone, and as such it was much more acceptable to have people into and out of the ranks of slavery. Historical slavery is more akin to indentured servitude. That said, I imagine with a few hundred years experience, assuming we can drastically reduce the still present racism we have in our societies, we might have an different response to the words master and slave, one more in line with historical context, and not the short but all to horrible period where it meant something worse. That's not to say it's good, just that we often use words that aren't pleasant in reality without thinking twice, such as steal, clobber, etc.
tangent128 11y ago
Looking at their comment history, "trolling" is a safe bet. And I would assume anybody accusing the man(ual) command of being gendered is being disingenuous until proven otherwise. (That said, growing up in the American South, I've seen enough disgusting attitudes still persisting that preserving established replicated systems terminology is not a hill I'm in the mood to die on.)
mwfunk 11y ago
All of those things sound like isolated incidents rather than actual trends. Just using the term "SJW" communicates that you're in a constant state of readiness to be outraged about that stuff. Just treat it like the occasional silly overreaching that it is and be done with it, otherwise it creates an environment where there's no room for "community culture" discussions, ever. Any time a community increases in diversity, there's a chance for friction. Maybe it's from old-timers with poor social skills who don't realize they've been in a bubble. Maybe it's from new people with their own problems, trying to blame the old culture for their own difficulties fitting in. You know what it's not? A conspiracy or a trend. The only constructive, grown-up thing to do is to try to understand and have empathy for both groups, while pointedly not belonging to either one. In my experience, any time there's a kerfluffle about someone wanting to rename man(1) or <kerfluffle of your choice>, it's a very small group or an individual getting outraged over something silly, and an equally small group getting outraged over the first group's outrage. It's pointless and meaningless to the vast majority of the group, who just want to move on with their lives and get something done. If these things seem like they're more common now in open source than they were 10-20 years ago, (a) you'd be mistaken, and (b) if anything, that's just a sign of more people becoming involved, which is a good thing. Let 100 more people in, and chances are one of them will be a little crazy. That doesn't mean they all are, it just goes with the territory.

rhodysurf 11y ago

Yeah the master/slave thing pisses me off. They are words in the dictionary used to describe something and that is all.

untothebreach 11y ago
Except that people's experience of words doesn't come from the dictionary. Words aren't experienced in a vacuum, people assign different meanings to words based on their own experiences. To some of us, "master/slave" is just a phrase to describe an architecture. To others of us, it has historical connotations that makes it inappropriate.
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  Concepts don't stop existing merely because you ban the words used to refer to them. Masters and slaves have always existed in human history and will probably always exist. When we use the terms in software, we draw a metaphor from this experience. There's nothing wrong with that.
  - untothebreach 11y ago
    I don't see where anyone has proposed we "ban" any words at all. What I see are people who suggest that we use a different set of words, that accomplish the same ends as "master/slave," except with words that aren't associated with slavery. > "Masters and slaves have always existed in human history and will probably always exist" I don't understand this argument. I'm not saying your statement is wrong, but I fail to see how this is a justification for using the words in a technical context.
    - rewqfdsa 11y ago
      I don't accept that we can't use words that accurately describe a concept merely because some people find that concept unpleasant.
      - untothebreach 11y ago
        Really? Slavery is "unpleasant?" Going to the dentist is "unpleasant." The enslavement of an entire race of people goes quite a ways beyond "unpleasant."
        AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        > The enslavement of an entire race of people goes quite a ways beyond "unpleasant." Absolutely. But what we're talking about isn't racial. The last time I worked on a master/slave setup (I forget whether we used those terms), the "master" and "slave" were of the same race. In fact, the slave could become the master, and the master could become the slave. You may tell me that we're talking about the words, and I suppose that's true. But the words are also used for same-race slavery, so the words are not inherently about a racially-charged situation either.
- rhodysurf 11y ago
  Okay but that doesn't mean the word stops existing. My point is that master and slave are general terms, not specific to one group of people. This is a slippery slope to go down.
  - untothebreach 11y ago
    Sure it's a slippery slope, but let's think about this from the perspective of an open-source project (where I most see this issue debated). If a goal of yours is to attract as many people to contribute to your project as possible, then it only makes sense to avoid using terms that might discourage others by making them uncomfortable, at least in the context of the project (issue trackers, documentation, etc). Saying, "well those words are defined as ___ in the dictionary" doesn't change the fact that you are losing potential contributors. Especially when there are other terms that work just as well, it only makes sense to avoid potentially problematic ones. I'm not going to say you (as an individual) should stop using those words. That is your business, not mine, and if you run into any consequences of using specific words, that is also your business.
    - rhodysurf 11y ago
      By this thinking any word without context can cause outrage.
      - untothebreach 11y ago
        All I'm saying, is if you recognize that a word is potentially costing you contributors, why wouldn't you change it if there is another word that is just as good? I'm just trying to be practical, not trying to force PC-think down anyone's throat.
        rhodysurf 11y ago
        Right, but in this case master slave often describes the relationship between computer devices better than anything else. The slave device has no choice of what to do other than what a master device sends it. Leader and follower doest quite capture that as well in my mind.

bajsejohannes 11y ago

I would certainly welcome changing master/slave to leader/follower. It's no less clear, and it doesn't associate my software with something I'm deeply against. People might have different reactions to this thing so what's a stupid change to you might be a crucial change to someone else. (I agree that changing man is a little silly as it's obviously short for manual)

rewqfdsa 11y ago
How about kill(2)? Why does the POSIX committee endorse murder?
- tangent128 11y ago
  "kill" as a term for the forcible cessation of life carries no baggage tying it to historical atrocities. It can and is used to refer to deaths of stars, bacteria, plants, abstract concepts, and humans, without any connotation that these deaths carry equivalent moral weight. genocide(2), on the other hand, would be in very poor taste.
kbenson 11y ago
I don't know, to me master/slave embodies teh relationship of the devices better than leader/follower, and also has less alternate meanings when viewed as a verb to confuse what is going on. Is the leader "out front"? Is the leader "first"? Is the follower doing the same thing, but delayed in some manner (which doesn't fit standby situations very well). A master controls. A slave is controlled. Additionally, I think it's worth looking at the issue with a wider perspective. Slavery is bad, but really what most people in the west think of when thinking of slavery is racial slavery, which is a more recent issue (at least at scale), and is a much more pernicious problem,since it's not really slavery that was the base problem, but extreme racism. Historically slaves could be anyone, and as such it was much more acceptable to have people into and out of the ranks of slavery. Historical slavery is more akin to indentured servitude. That said, I imagine with a few hundred years experience, assuming we can drastically reduce the still present racism we have in our societies, we might have an different response to the words master and slave, one more in line with historical context, and not the short but all to horrible period where it meant something worse. That's not to say it's good, just that we often use words that aren't pleasant in reality without thinking twice, such as steal, clobber, etc.

tangent128 11y ago

Looking at their comment history, "trolling" is a safe bet. And I would assume anybody accusing the man(ual) command of being gendered is being disingenuous until proven otherwise. (That said, growing up in the American South, I've seen enough disgusting attitudes still persisting that preserving established replicated systems terminology is not a hill I'm in the mood to die on.)

mwfunk 11y ago

All of those things sound like isolated incidents rather than actual trends. Just using the term "SJW" communicates that you're in a constant state of readiness to be outraged about that stuff. Just treat it like the occasional silly overreaching that it is and be done with it, otherwise it creates an environment where there's no room for "community culture" discussions, ever. Any time a community increases in diversity, there's a chance for friction. Maybe it's from old-timers with poor social skills who don't realize they've been in a bubble. Maybe it's from new people with their own problems, trying to blame the old culture for their own difficulties fitting in. You know what it's not? A conspiracy or a trend. The only constructive, grown-up thing to do is to try to understand and have empathy for both groups, while pointedly not belonging to either one. In my experience, any time there's a kerfluffle about someone wanting to rename man(1) or <kerfluffle of your choice>, it's a very small group or an individual getting outraged over something silly, and an equally small group getting outraged over the first group's outrage. It's pointless and meaningless to the vast majority of the group, who just want to move on with their lives and get something done. If these things seem like they're more common now in open source than they were 10-20 years ago, (a) you'd be mistaken, and (b) if anything, that's just a sign of more people becoming involved, which is a good thing. Let 100 more people in, and chances are one of them will be a little crazy. That doesn't mean they all are, it just goes with the territory.