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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Showerthoughts
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y'all I understand there are larger issues in the world but please let's not pretend that POC working in tech feel awesome about typing master/slave in the terminal, it's outdated and should be changed.
Also not great when you’re trying to explain something to a client.
I'm white and I don't feel comfortable saying it/typing it. It's antiquated and weird.
But POC are not the only ones that have been enslaved.
Pretty much all races and people have been enslaved in history.
Slave does not equal North American POC slave and the term in this context has absolutely nothing to do with them. The only time it refers specifically to them is when discussing North American history (and maybe current history due to the fact that USA still enslaves people in prison)
One might argue that the term is outdated because slaves are less common these days, but it has nothing to do with POC (or human slaves at all). But I won't argue that because the term is very easy to understand and thus not outdated.
North American, more specifically US slavery is very recent relative to the rest of history and was deeply ingrained into the economy of half the United States. War broke out to abolish it and the effects of it are still felt today.
Don't deflect from the racism, discrimination, and prejudice that black Americans still experience to this day because of slavery.
Maybe but the terms slave and master have nothing to do with that.
The origin of the terms have nothing to do with it, and they historically apply to a broad range of races and peoples, but I guarantee when the average person hears "master/slave" their first thought is likely "American south" and not "IDE Drive configuration" or "hydraulic system", so unless I've misinterpreted you by mistake, I'm not sure how you could seriously claim "the terms master and slave have nothing to do with [the historical systemic dehumanization of PoC]"
I understand it's more syllables to say "primary/secondary", but you can also use:
Active/Standby
Parent/Child
Main/Secondary
Initiator/Target
and far more
Changing our habits is annoying and takes effort, but I dont know why people are so enthusiastic to hang onto a term that refers to a historically dehumanizing relationship that people are still unwillingly subjected to in the modern day.
This seems like projection... How do you even begin to have this much certainty about what goes on in any head beside your own?
I also think it's weird to hear the word slave in this context (or in the automotive industry where it is also used) and immediately think of black people. What does that say about you and your thought process?
I think its weird to even use such a term in a different context to begin with. Its also generally pretty inaccurate. Many such primary/secondary or parent/child relationships in tech exist either for redundancy or for determining priority/sort order, which isn't what a master/slave relationship would do in a slavery scenerio. About the closest equivalent is a manager/worker relationship, which again is more accurate to say manager/worker because it is not a hostile relationship between the worker nodes and the manager node.
So in short:
Some places I've worked...
"Uh, I'm child free thank you very much, don't tell me how to think." /s
people aren't enthusiastic about handing onto a derelict term, people just don't care because they don't see a significant enough relation between the two for it to matter, and they know that any given reasonable person will also recognize it as well.
And for that matter, if we're getting rid of master/slave because it's so bad, we should get rid of killing processes, and especially killing child processes. Because those are arguably worse.
As a parent I have zero qualms about the term "killing child processes" also there's far more actions involved in parent/child relationships in tech than just killing processes.
i suppose that's true, but i think that's unfair as the term master/slave itself wouldn't constitute more than the literal power dynamic between A and B as is the intended point of the terminology. It's not meant to be broadly applicable in a generic sense. Though if we were to argue that it would be equally as easy to argue that architecture designs constitute far more than a master/slave style, such that it would remove the significance of the term in a similar manner.
hate to be that guy but like, i feel like we should probably push for more POC to enter CS education fields, or like, improve the socioeconomic status of them, or like, crack down on discriminatory hiring practices, before we like. Start removing words because they feel moderately icky and make my skin crawl.
Why not both? We have the capacity to replace outdated/useless words and make the situation better for others. In fact, one does not prevent the other whatsoever
that's also true. But seeing as this is a discussion primarily about removing terms from common parlance, i think it's reasonable to focus on solely that aspect.
Ultimately, i'm just not really convinced that doing this is going to be ultimately productive at the end of the day. I might be wrong i suppose. But i think i'd need to see some supporting data first.
That's a cool story, bro.
Completely irrelevant to the observation that descendents of slaves probably dont appreciate the terminology.
Exactly
It's a weird phrase to begin with.
In law, the phrase "master / servant" has been around forever. It's the foundation of the law of agency.
Some tech bro picked slave instead of servant.
Not just that, it's bad and makes no sense in its technical context.
Server client is far better.
No, that's completely dependent on what you are referring too. I have never heard anyone ever referring to a server as "master" or a client as a "slave". The slave/master terminology is often used for storage. I.E. Master drive and slave drive.
Nowadays its more ofte used for server hierarchies/functionality. Or well, a lot of software is changing now. Mariadb use Source and replica.
You are correct I swapped client with other such as worker, child, and helper,
My problem with the term "slave" is that it does not indicate there is a delegation of work going, on but rather that the subdevice is somehow fully "owned" by the master device. Whereas in reality the master is more like a manager telling a worker what to do.
In some cases the sub device is pretty much owned by the "master" device.
I'm mostly thinking of IDE since that's the only place I ever hear anyone use master/slave except GIT where master is used.
that's because the server is rarely the master, the clients do work, and the server just exchanges the work of the clients, it's a lot more akin to a telephone exchange as opposed to a master/slave architecture.
The fact that you write POC instead of "black people" shows how ridiculous this whole conversation is.
Is asked the local POC (Indonesian-Japanese; Indonesian-born) and he responded (and I quote) "people need to stop being pussies". The Brazilians (Brazil mentioned!) didn't care much either.
So I don't need to pretend anything about anything.
Your milage may vary though.
are you a person of color yourself? Or are you white like the statistical majority of us?
Shitposting aside, i feel like if you feel weird typing it out, you probably care too much about most things in life, though then again, i'm pretty fucking autistic so.