It’s a simple term which uses a well known social phenomena as an analogy to describe an architecture. You could have called it Maxwell-Hertz Philosophy of infr

It’s a simple term which uses a well known social phenomena as an analogy to describe an architecture. You could have called it Maxwell-Hertz Philosophy of infrastructure design, but then would need to spend a ton of time socializing it. But ... why? Pets vs cattle is easy to understand, you get the concept right away with little explanation, and it’s kinda tongue in cheek. Another term I’ve heard used for it is to treat infrastructure as phoenixes: you can burn it down but get a functioning one right away. But cattle vs pets lets you refer to both kinds of machines. I’m sorry if the references to animal cruelty (kinda?) makes you uneasy, but let’s be honest, this is CS. Master-Slave replication, parent killing child processes, canary deployments etc all seem distasteful if all jumbled together. Their use is intended as an attempt at humor, but also a catchy and vivid name to easily recall the underlying principles, which is kinda brilliant.