4 ms·

I've had conversations with colleagues about the use of 'master' and 'slave' which appear to also be falling out of favour. Had mentioned that forking and killi

I've had conversations with colleagues about the use of 'master' and 'slave' which appear to also be falling out of favour. Had mentioned that forking and killing children seems to be acceptable language, for now. Perhaps I'll have to go back to school and re-learn English. I still have an installation of GIMP.

yakubin 5y ago
I thought forking referred to what's happening to the process tree, similar to what forking means in chess.
- choward 5y ago
  That's the entire point. Coq doesn't mean male genitalia either. But because it happens to spelled or sound like another word it is treated like that word.
postsantum 5y ago
I wonder if they end up renaming git branches, because it's not very inclusive to ask certain coworkers what branch they are on
captainmuon 5y ago
I remember being irritated as a kid from "master" and "slave" switches on ATA hard disks. I found it really weird that the serious hardware company chose such a colorful metaphor (I think I associated it more with certain sexual practices than historical slavery). Now I'm used to the terms and don't make the connection anymore. They might as well be completely unrelated words written "mahsta" and "slehf" that just happen to sound like other bad words. In these and similar cases, I'd personally rather keep the innocent meaning of the words, and discourage the original meaning. "Slave" is just a device on I2C, why would you call a forced servant that? And why would you call somebody who committed the unthinkable crime of claiming to another human as "master"? One very unfortunate name I'm surprized nobody has latched on to is MongoDB...
rsynnott 5y ago
> Perhaps I'll have to go back to school and re-learn English. Absurd hyperbole. “ These days, these days, right, if you say you're English, you'll be arrested and thrown in jail!”
sinkasapa 5y ago
I once worked at a campus disability resource center and was encouraging the use of open source software. It was not comfortable pitching the GIMP as a Photoshop alternative. Luckily I don't think anyone felt personally attacked and it was understood to be an unfortunate coincidence. One person said, "I guess that's what people call me." which brought to the fore how even coincidental naming issues can remind people of something unpleasant. When it comes to Coq, I have a colleague that likes to emphasize the pun. It does turn some people off when they hear him going on about it. On the other hand, there is a lot of puritanical thinking in the US and maybe we should just become more comfortable with the notion that sexual organs, like mouths and elbows are part of the body. Then maybe my friend's "joke" wouldn't even make sense. It would be like "haha nose!" and people would shrug. But that isn't the world we live in and maybe the one we live in, where people find penises funny or offensive, is more fun. I don't know. I'm not really advocating renaming stuff or not. I see it as more of a dialog between the namers and the people who are bothered, at least with borderline cases like these. There are instances where names should be changed. Like there are ISO-639 codes that essentially use the equivalent of the N-word to refer to languages. That's really hurtful to minority communities that speak those languages. Names do have consequences. I guess it is just a question of whether people are ok with the consequences or not. And of course, you can't make everyone happy all the time.
- ricardo81 5y ago
  > you can't make everyone happy all the time. Indeed. I think when I'd heard of GIMP it maybe raised an eyebrow but nothing much beyond that. Anything more about it just seems like an immature and probably harmless joke, but that's just me. When it comes to genitalia, there's literally hundreds of euphemisms - which seems to be the nature that language takes for primal things. There has to be a balance or Johnson & Johnson may need to rethink their name, too.
dTal 5y ago
The main problem with GIMP's name is that it clashes with GIMPS - the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.

yakubin 5y ago

I thought forking referred to what's happening to the process tree, similar to what forking means in chess.

choward 5y ago
That's the entire point. Coq doesn't mean male genitalia either. But because it happens to spelled or sound like another word it is treated like that word.

postsantum 5y ago

I wonder if they end up renaming git branches, because it's not very inclusive to ask certain coworkers what branch they are on

captainmuon 5y ago

I remember being irritated as a kid from "master" and "slave" switches on ATA hard disks. I found it really weird that the serious hardware company chose such a colorful metaphor (I think I associated it more with certain sexual practices than historical slavery). Now I'm used to the terms and don't make the connection anymore. They might as well be completely unrelated words written "mahsta" and "slehf" that just happen to sound like other bad words. In these and similar cases, I'd personally rather keep the innocent meaning of the words, and discourage the original meaning. "Slave" is just a device on I2C, why would you call a forced servant that? And why would you call somebody who committed the unthinkable crime of claiming to another human as "master"? One very unfortunate name I'm surprized nobody has latched on to is MongoDB...

rsynnott 5y ago

> Perhaps I'll have to go back to school and re-learn English. Absurd hyperbole. “ These days, these days, right, if you say you're English, you'll be arrested and thrown in jail!”

sinkasapa 5y ago

I once worked at a campus disability resource center and was encouraging the use of open source software. It was not comfortable pitching the GIMP as a Photoshop alternative. Luckily I don't think anyone felt personally attacked and it was understood to be an unfortunate coincidence. One person said, "I guess that's what people call me." which brought to the fore how even coincidental naming issues can remind people of something unpleasant. When it comes to Coq, I have a colleague that likes to emphasize the pun. It does turn some people off when they hear him going on about it. On the other hand, there is a lot of puritanical thinking in the US and maybe we should just become more comfortable with the notion that sexual organs, like mouths and elbows are part of the body. Then maybe my friend's "joke" wouldn't even make sense. It would be like "haha nose!" and people would shrug. But that isn't the world we live in and maybe the one we live in, where people find penises funny or offensive, is more fun. I don't know. I'm not really advocating renaming stuff or not. I see it as more of a dialog between the namers and the people who are bothered, at least with borderline cases like these. There are instances where names should be changed. Like there are ISO-639 codes that essentially use the equivalent of the N-word to refer to languages. That's really hurtful to minority communities that speak those languages. Names do have consequences. I guess it is just a question of whether people are ok with the consequences or not. And of course, you can't make everyone happy all the time.

ricardo81 5y ago
> you can't make everyone happy all the time. Indeed. I think when I'd heard of GIMP it maybe raised an eyebrow but nothing much beyond that. Anything more about it just seems like an immature and probably harmless joke, but that's just me. When it comes to genitalia, there's literally hundreds of euphemisms - which seems to be the nature that language takes for primal things. There has to be a balance or Johnson & Johnson may need to rethink their name, too.

dTal 5y ago

The main problem with GIMP's name is that it clashes with GIMPS - the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.