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Software engineering is undergoing a (nother) cultural change. More people than ever before are engineers and are participating in its culture, bringing their

Software engineering is undergoing a (nother) cultural change. More people than ever before are engineers and are participating in its culture, bringing their own perspectives and experiences with them. Consequently, a lot more people are weighing in on what is and isn't acceptable. This is good! Diversity breeds strength, and while it can be tumultuous it's always worth it. Language changes too. There are all kinds of words we used to use that, for one reason or another, we just don't use anymore. And if you happen to use one, reactions range from "woof what an anachronism" to "yikes that's bigoted". > I'm not completely unsympathetic, but I sometimes feel the sympathy only goes one way. Yeah I can understand. But I think the asymmetry is because the issue itself is asymmetrical. On one hand it feels like busy work to go and change master/slave to primary/secondary or whatever, and it can also feel a little insulting to be accused of racism (or at least insensitivity or ignorance) for using those terms when some of them are more or less terms of art. On the other, at least master/slave has some implications that are pretty disgusting. They're not engineering terms. They're terms that invoke some of the most brutal human regimes in history. They've been reappropriated rather clumsily to represent a controller/controllee relationship, but make no mistake: they refer specifically to a power structure that gave one human being complete dominion over another -- and often that dominion was misused to an extreme, violent degree. So that's where the asymmetry comes from. Essentially it's a couple of sed commands vs. casually invoking (and thus encoding into our software) a history of crushing oppression.

delian66 8y ago
So where does this "cultural" change end? Do you want to have control over not only the used terms, but even the thought constructs that they represent? Most peoples throughout history have been enslaved at one time or another. Most peoples have waged war on one another, most of them brutal and prolonged. A small percentage do criminal acts even in peace time. Do you want to ban/replace terms like war, battle, kill also?
- camgunz 8y ago
  > So where does this "cultural" change end? That's a fair question, and the answer is that cultural change is never "done", nor does it move in a single direction. I would imagine in 20 years our culture will be significantly different than it is now. I hope it's more tolerant, kind, and understanding, but there's no guarantee. > Do you want to have control over not only the used terms, but even the thought constructs that they represent? I'm not super sure what you mean by this. I'm pretty ok with thought constructs. Where I draw a line is introducing them insensitively or harmfully. Like, feel free to think anything you like at a wedding, but maybe keep your cynicism about love and connection to yourself for the duration. > Most peoples throughout history have been enslaved at one time or another. Most peoples have waged war on one another, most of them brutal and prolonged. A small percentage do criminal acts even in peace time. Do you want to ban/replace terms like war, battle, kill also? I get where you're coming from, and I do think in some circumstances that might be appropriate. Consider if you were building an app for refugees from a war that's killed millions, and you, for whatever reason, needed some ranking algorithm and called it ThingWar (whatever "Thing" would really be). Is it the worst thing in the world? Nah, but it is a little oblivious. All I'm saying is that the legacy of Atlantic slavery still exerts a strong force on the lives of millions and millions of people. We should be sensitive to that.
  - delian66 8y ago
    You are free to fork the projects, that use "insensitive" terms, run sed on them, then test the result, and send pull requests. Other people then are free to reject your changes if they want, and you will be wrong to attack them for their choice. Programming (and thinking in general) is hard enough. Have some compassion for your fellow programmers, and please do not make it even harder, by insisting on clouding our thoughts with bullshit political correctness ideas and demands that have nothing to do with programming and everything to do with empty virtue signaling.
    - camgunz 8y ago
      > bullshit political correctness ideas > empty virtue signaling I wish you would be a little more open minded, and I'm sorry that since you're not it seems we can't have a productive discussion. > You are free to fork the projects, that use "insensitive" terms, run sed on them, then test the result, and send pull requests. Other people then are free to reject your changes if they want, and you will be wrong to attack them for their choice. This is more than a little disingenuous. Would this really work for something like Redis, or is it that you know it wouldn't and you're advancing it as a non-solution because you think this is all, in your words, "bullshit political correctness"?

delian66 8y ago

So where does this "cultural" change end? Do you want to have control over not only the used terms, but even the thought constructs that they represent? Most peoples throughout history have been enslaved at one time or another. Most peoples have waged war on one another, most of them brutal and prolonged. A small percentage do criminal acts even in peace time. Do you want to ban/replace terms like war, battle, kill also?

camgunz 8y ago
> So where does this "cultural" change end? That's a fair question, and the answer is that cultural change is never "done", nor does it move in a single direction. I would imagine in 20 years our culture will be significantly different than it is now. I hope it's more tolerant, kind, and understanding, but there's no guarantee. > Do you want to have control over not only the used terms, but even the thought constructs that they represent? I'm not super sure what you mean by this. I'm pretty ok with thought constructs. Where I draw a line is introducing them insensitively or harmfully. Like, feel free to think anything you like at a wedding, but maybe keep your cynicism about love and connection to yourself for the duration. > Most peoples throughout history have been enslaved at one time or another. Most peoples have waged war on one another, most of them brutal and prolonged. A small percentage do criminal acts even in peace time. Do you want to ban/replace terms like war, battle, kill also? I get where you're coming from, and I do think in some circumstances that might be appropriate. Consider if you were building an app for refugees from a war that's killed millions, and you, for whatever reason, needed some ranking algorithm and called it ThingWar (whatever "Thing" would really be). Is it the worst thing in the world? Nah, but it is a little oblivious. All I'm saying is that the legacy of Atlantic slavery still exerts a strong force on the lives of millions and millions of people. We should be sensitive to that.
- delian66 8y ago
  You are free to fork the projects, that use "insensitive" terms, run sed on them, then test the result, and send pull requests. Other people then are free to reject your changes if they want, and you will be wrong to attack them for their choice. Programming (and thinking in general) is hard enough. Have some compassion for your fellow programmers, and please do not make it even harder, by insisting on clouding our thoughts with bullshit political correctness ideas and demands that have nothing to do with programming and everything to do with empty virtue signaling.
  - camgunz 8y ago
    > bullshit political correctness ideas > empty virtue signaling I wish you would be a little more open minded, and I'm sorry that since you're not it seems we can't have a productive discussion. > You are free to fork the projects, that use "insensitive" terms, run sed on them, then test the result, and send pull requests. Other people then are free to reject your changes if they want, and you will be wrong to attack them for their choice. This is more than a little disingenuous. Would this really work for something like Redis, or is it that you know it wouldn't and you're advancing it as a non-solution because you think this is all, in your words, "bullshit political correctness"?