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What about phasing out the usage of offensive terms in the same way we do with non-programming languages? We don't go back and correct all of our books, but whe

What about phasing out the usage of offensive terms in the same way we do with non-programming languages? We don't go back and correct all of our books, but when reading old books the offensive terms that were common in previous times stick out like sore thumbs. And I know that I have at least a few phrases that I used to use without a thought that I conciouslly chose to drop from my speech now that I see the wrong in them. I think we can choose to change as a community with little overhead to the "many" but provide a great benefit to the "few".

subjectsigma 8y ago
That's a reasonable suggestion that's hard to argue with - I still don't see it happening. There's no consensus on what words are bad (what makes "kill" worse than "dongle", etc.) or how these should be phased out. Does that mean at the next major version number? By 2025? Will the documentation be internally inconsistent during those years? If some projects agree and others don't there would be cumbersome fragmentation. And... for what? So a couple dozen people in the entire community can avoid the concepts of murder or sex or slavery, as if they didn't exist? I guess it all comes down to context, really... It's easy for me to sit here and say "This change is meaningless" but I guess if I had lots of influence over Python and I knew people who were actually suffering because of this, I may approach it differently.