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Honest question: are there people out there who are legitimately uncomfortable/upset about the usage of the terms "master" and "slave" in the context of technol

Honest question: are there people out there who are legitimately uncomfortable/upset about the usage of the terms "master" and "slave" in the context of technology? Or is this more so people trying to be too socially "woke" and assuming something to be offensive when it is not? Master/slave are pretty commonly used terms whenever we talk about things like distributed systems and communication buses. Essentially everywhere that one process, controller, computer, etc. is meant to have authority or control over some other entity or entities, this is often described as a master-slave relationship.

zucker42 6y ago
Yes, there are legitimately people who believe the master-slave terminology trivializes American slavery. They are mostly in the U.S. and probably a minority of programmers but they exist. But in this case, there's not even a slave branch.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  Also America is just one among the 100% of populated parts of the world that had chattel slavery at some point, it's pretty rich that ignorant people from America tricking themselves into being offended by this sort of thing should have any effect on other people's behaviour.
- kickopotomus 6y ago
  > Yes, there are legitimately people who believe the master-slave terminology trivializes American slavery. I suppose this is something I don't understand. How do terms become trivial when used in separate contexts? They are simply descriptive terms. Furthermore, from an etymological standpoint, the term "master" has been used to signify preeminence since the 13th century. E.g. master's degree, master-key, master copy, etc. This is the meaning that seems more applicable to a version control system.
  - zucker42 6y ago
    I agree with you in this case, since master is used by itself, similarly to master key. But I'll try to provide some insight into the argument specifically regarding master and slave used together. > How do terms become trivial when used in separate contexts? They are simply descriptive terms. This is where I think you are incorrect. Master and slave are not simply descriptive terms. Pretty obviously, they are an analogy, just like, for example, male and female plugs. The point of analogies is that they use existing relationships to describe new relationships, so that understanding the new relationships is easier. So I think the issue for some people is that in master/slave architectures, the master node neither brutally beats the slave nodes nor justifies its power through a theory of racial superiority. Maybe a more accurate analogy would be that one node is the leader and the others are the followers. Maybe we should only use the master/slave in situations which are actually comparable to the historic instances of chattel slavery. Plus, an updated analogy can better serve the purpose of describing relationships. In the context of databases, for example, primary/replica or master/replica are IMO both much better analogies than master/slave. Sure you can argue they are simply descriptive terms. But if that's the case, why did engineers choose existing terms in the first place?
- robotron 6y ago
  I've never been a fan of master/slave when it comes to disks etc. although I thought renaming it was dumb (previously). Glad things are moving away from it. But this isn't master/slave, it's master/fork. Of course now that I think about it, main/fork or even better primary/fork sounds good to me.
gyrgtyn 6y ago
do your own research
- dang 6y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've done it a lot lately, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. Actually I did just ban you, but then your previous contributions seemed fine, so I reversed that and decided to make a request instead. We'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
orev 6y ago
The word “master” still makes sense to me, as it has many different meanings, most of which are appropriate for how they are used in technology. However I have always felt that the word “slave” (as the counterpart to master) was/is a mistake. It seems to be a relic of the past where people weren’t really thinking through the terminology they chose. More modern approaches typically use other word pairs, like master/minion, sever/client, active/backup, master/agent, etc. Different pairs are chosen that better describe the relationships, and I suspect those choices were made, at least in some way, to avoid using the term “slave”.
tracker1 6y ago
In the case of source code, I find trunk to be one of the better terms for the primary/main/master branch.

zucker42 6y ago

Yes, there are legitimately people who believe the master-slave terminology trivializes American slavery. They are mostly in the U.S. and probably a minority of programmers but they exist. But in this case, there's not even a slave branch.

microcolonel 6y ago
Also America is just one among the 100% of populated parts of the world that had chattel slavery at some point, it's pretty rich that ignorant people from America tricking themselves into being offended by this sort of thing should have any effect on other people's behaviour.
kickopotomus 6y ago
> Yes, there are legitimately people who believe the master-slave terminology trivializes American slavery. I suppose this is something I don't understand. How do terms become trivial when used in separate contexts? They are simply descriptive terms. Furthermore, from an etymological standpoint, the term "master" has been used to signify preeminence since the 13th century. E.g. master's degree, master-key, master copy, etc. This is the meaning that seems more applicable to a version control system.
- zucker42 6y ago
  I agree with you in this case, since master is used by itself, similarly to master key. But I'll try to provide some insight into the argument specifically regarding master and slave used together. > How do terms become trivial when used in separate contexts? They are simply descriptive terms. This is where I think you are incorrect. Master and slave are not simply descriptive terms. Pretty obviously, they are an analogy, just like, for example, male and female plugs. The point of analogies is that they use existing relationships to describe new relationships, so that understanding the new relationships is easier. So I think the issue for some people is that in master/slave architectures, the master node neither brutally beats the slave nodes nor justifies its power through a theory of racial superiority. Maybe a more accurate analogy would be that one node is the leader and the others are the followers. Maybe we should only use the master/slave in situations which are actually comparable to the historic instances of chattel slavery. Plus, an updated analogy can better serve the purpose of describing relationships. In the context of databases, for example, primary/replica or master/replica are IMO both much better analogies than master/slave. Sure you can argue they are simply descriptive terms. But if that's the case, why did engineers choose existing terms in the first place?
robotron 6y ago
I've never been a fan of master/slave when it comes to disks etc. although I thought renaming it was dumb (previously). Glad things are moving away from it. But this isn't master/slave, it's master/fork. Of course now that I think about it, main/fork or even better primary/fork sounds good to me.

gyrgtyn 6y ago

do your own research

dang 6y ago
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've done it a lot lately, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. Actually I did just ban you, but then your previous contributions seemed fine, so I reversed that and decided to make a request instead. We'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

orev 6y ago

The word “master” still makes sense to me, as it has many different meanings, most of which are appropriate for how they are used in technology. However I have always felt that the word “slave” (as the counterpart to master) was/is a mistake. It seems to be a relic of the past where people weren’t really thinking through the terminology they chose. More modern approaches typically use other word pairs, like master/minion, sever/client, active/backup, master/agent, etc. Different pairs are chosen that better describe the relationships, and I suspect those choices were made, at least in some way, to avoid using the term “slave”.

tracker1 6y ago

In the case of source code, I find trunk to be one of the better terms for the primary/main/master branch.