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How amusing. As a thought experiment, if using the term "slave" is prohibitively offensive in a computer program (even if the reference is only conceptual and
by bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
How amusing.
As a thought experiment, if using the term "slave" is prohibitively offensive in a computer program (even if the reference is only conceptual and doesn't have anything to do with human slavery--as anyone with half a brain knows), what is supposed to happen in the event that a program, or some "casual" text actually does need to refer to actual human slavery? Is it a topic that can no longer be put to words, because the words are offensive? For example, what if I wrote a computer program to do some sort of analysis on historical slavery data. Is it acceptable or not to name a variable "slaves?" Do I have to rename it "disadvantagedPersonsThanksBLM" ?
Would the reasoning be "conceptual slavery cannot be expressed in such a way, but real slavery is permissible to express" ?
What's next, "leader?" Maybe red-black trees have to be renamed? Integration tests? Maybe we have to switch default terminal colors to pink-purple to satisfy the definitely-not-fascists?
- polishdude20 6y agoIt's easier to try and remove words to show everyone you're "doing something" than to actually make a real change.
- kube-system 6y agoI think proponents of this change would say that talking about slavery is the perfect time to use the word "slavery". This is about an organization deciding to stop using the word for something that is not slavery. I would say that both "slaves" and "disadvantagedPersonsThanksBLM" are likely both inappropriate variable names for your program. You should probably pick something that is more descriptive of the function.