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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
by 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 agoBy this thinking any word without context can cause outrage.
- untothebreach 11y agoAll 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 agoRight, 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.
- untothebreach 11y ago> has no choice of what to do Tell that to the MySQL cluster I inherited at my last job ;-). In all seriousness, I have to disagree with you, in that I think leader/follower captures the relationship fine. But at this point, I think "whether the word captures the relationship" is very subjective.