3 ms·

I know it is functionally immaterial There's nothing wrong with Master/slave. We also read man pages, shove male plugs into female ports, fork and kill childre

by moe 12y ago

I know it is functionally immaterial There's nothing wrong with Master/slave. We also read man pages, shove male plugs into female ports, fork and kill children, and use dozens of other odd words to describe perfectly harmless things.

waterhouse 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_%28computer_science%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_%28computer_scien...
kenko 12y ago
"man" is at least short for "manual". There's nothing essential about master/slave so why not just switch to primary/replica?
- robd003 12y ago
  Because the master forces the slave to do it's bidding.
  - diroussel 12y ago
    Not if the replica is pulling changes from the primary.
  - kenko 12y ago
    But ... so what? For one thing, the metaphor doesn't have to go that way. For another, "leader/follower" captures that too.
- moe 12y ago
  Because there is no reason to screw with common terminology to begin with. Neither Master nor Slave is a derogatory word. And using the concept of slavery to describe a relationship between inanimate objects in a technical context is not an endorsement of such practices between humans.