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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Showerthoughts
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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.