Is it a problem that programming languages have terms like "master" and "slave"?

[indigotyrian]

5 minutes ago, Benjogami said:

@segfault Seems like you're offended. It must be upsetting when other people's grievances are acknowledged and yours aren't. I understand.

"U mad?" as a rebuttal. Very cute. You should probably get on to finding the portal back to early 2000s Something Awful so you can return to the time you came from.

 

3 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

There's a slight problem here. Once you start censoring things based on hurt feelings, where does it end? Potentially, anything could be offensive. It's a slippery slope towards massive censorship and curtailing of freedom of speech and expression. This, to me, is far more offensive than any 'hate speech' I'm aware of.

 

And no, this is not about being historically uninformed, or the supposed decrease in slavery. in fact, while slavery and the slave trade no longer operate legally anywhere in the world, and a smaller percentage of human beings are enslaved, human trafficking remains a major problem worldwide.

 

Anyone who's been following current culture knows the real reason. It's as I said -- Social Justice orthodoxy campaigning for power and influence, and control of language is a major component of that (as Orwell warned us).

It's really cool that we're on a forum dedicated to a video game that was subject to intense scrutiny from actual censors back in its heyday, arguing with the same people who tried to banish this game to the shadow realm. Fucking fantastic.

[Sparktimus]

12 minutes ago, segfault said:

It's fucking stupid and the people pushing for this are pushing for it because they have zero technical ability but a gnawing need to have some, any, relevance to the group they're trying to cling to. Fuck'em.

 

 

I'm sick and fucking tired of this bullshit. Do sysadmins who had to bury their own kids start crying whenever they have to deal with killing off child processes? No. This is a non-issue that's invented by a caste of people who desperately need something to be upset about, and what they're upset about is usually the fact that mommy hasn't cut the crust off their sandwich.

 

Is the "reactionary Internet outrage machine that stirs up a big unnecessary drama" the people who try to change words so that nobody will ever be offended, or the people who are annoyed at said moral guardians?

Remember when people thought Doom was evil because it had demons and caused school shooters? It's frankly shocking that the guy in charge of Doom's arguably most important historical project next to the idgames archive is behaving like post-Columbine bible-thumpers. I understand that they're your friends, but tbh you need to get your head out of your ass.

Notice how everyone else in this thread isn't reacting at all like how you're reacting. All fraggle said was "I think this is okay" and you're acting as if he's aggressively trying to push some kind of crazy agenda. Getting this upset over people substituting a few words for a language they invented is honestly really silly and ironic considering how "reactionary" you seem to be about it.

Personally, I don't really give a damn one way or the other about people changing a few words and instilling new meanings because that's just how the nature of language is. It's always changing and evolving. I never had a problem with those terms specifically, but if the people who are creating this language want to switch some things around that will ultimately effect nothing, then be my guest. People are honestly trying to hard to look for some kind of undercurrent of corruption or a hidden agenda in anything. It's starting to become very ridiculous at this point.

[jerrysheppy]

On the one hand I would hope that any reasonable person can realize that the term is being used in a context that has no resemblance to, say, the atrocities of antebellum slavery in the United States, or even the lesser human rights violations involved in non-chattel slavery throughout history.

 

On the other hand, if it costs you nothing to replace it with a term like "parent and child" or "leader and follower" then why not?

 

I think part of the problem with even discussing things like these, and we're seeing this in this thread even, is that the assumption creeps in that something is either 100% A-OK, doesn't bother anybody an iota, no reason to change it; or it's the most horrible offensive thing ever and you just ruined someone's life and now you're a doublehitler forever.  But this sort of stark dichotomy is a dumb way to look at it-- it's perfectly possible for something to only bother somebody a little bit, or only bother a few people, and yet still be worth changing because the change is so simple and easy. 

 

Take the example of somebody who's a parent who lost a child.  Obviously, this person can't go through life completely avoiding anything that would remind them of it, like seeing other people's children.  But at the same time, if I know this person, I'm probably going to give a little bit of extra consideration and try to avoid anything that would unnecessarily remind them of that loss, all else being equal.  And if I accidentally do, I'll say I'm sorry and see if I can avoid doing it again.  That's not "policing my language" or whatever the fuck, it's just being nice to people.

 

(I I have no knowledge of programming so I can't speak for how simple or easy it is in this context.  But from what I'm reading, it's not just people standing on the sidelines calling for a change, it's something that the folks in charge actually went ahead and did.  Clearly they thought it wasn't too much of a problem to be worth doing.)

[indigotyrian]

1 minute ago, Sparktimus said:

Notice how everyone else in this thread isn't reacting at all like how you're reacting. All fraggle said was "I think this is okay" and you're acting as if he's aggressively trying to push some kind of crazy agenda. Getting this upset over people substituting a few words for a language they invented is honestly really silly and ironic considering how "reactionary" you seem to be about it.

Personally, I don't really give a damn one way or the other about people changing a few words and instilling new meanings because that's just how the nature of language is. It's always changing and evolving. I never had a problem with those terms specifically, but if the people who are creating this language want to switch some things around that will ultimately effect nothing, then be my guest. People are honestly trying to hard to look for some kind of undercurrent of corruption or a hidden agenda in anything. It's starting to become very ridiculous at this point.

I apologize for getting hot under the collar but A) I get passionate about things and B) telling people what they can and cannot say is something that incredibly pisses me off, for several reasons ranging from personal to ideological. Also I'm not on my SSRI right now so that's not helping.

[Benjogami]

2 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

There's a slight problem here. Once you start censoring things based on hurt feelings, where does it end? Potentially, anything could be offensive. It's a slippery slope towards massive censorship and curtailing of freedom of speech and expression. This, to me, is far more offensive than any 'hate speech' I'm aware of.

 

And no, this is not about being historically uninformed, or the supposed decrease in slavery. in fact, while slavery and the slave trade no longer operate legally anywhere in the world, and a smaller percentage of human beings are enslaved, human trafficking remains a major problem worldwide.

 

Anyone who's been following current culture knows the real reason. It's as I said -- Social Justice orthodoxy campaigning for power and influence, and control of language is a major component of that (as Orwell warned us).

 

There's no slippery slope because this isn't censorship in the first place. You are still free to talk and write and opine about slavery all you want. You can even write a game in Python that glorifies slavery if you'd like. This is simply optimizing some terminology.

 

But yes, "anyone following the current culture" knows why this is upsetting to lots of people.

[Sparktimus]

3 minutes ago, segfault said:

I apologize for getting hot under the collar but A) I get passionate about things and B) telling people what they can and cannot say is something that incredibly pisses me off, for several reasons ranging from personal to ideological. Also I'm not on my SSRI right now so that's not helping.

That's understandable, but here's the thing. No one is policing what people can/cannot say in this case. No one is going to be "forced" to use those specific terms because that's literally impossible. It's mainly just a discussion of archaic terms that could be taken in the wrong context by certain individuals. Like the nature of all forms of language, words and meanings evolve and get supplanted by other words or meanings, and this is another case of that.

People act like groups getting offended by every little word or thing is this widespread issue when in reality, it's actually not. That is a very vocal minority of people who are only a small part of the group they claim they're a part of.

[Nine Inch Heels]

4 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

There's a slight problem here. Once you start censoring things based on hurt feelings, where does it end? Potentially, anything could be offensive. It's a slippery slope towards massive censorship and curtailing of freedom of speech and expression. This, to me, is far more offensive than any 'hate speech' I'm aware of.

Even though I can count myself to the supposedly lucky ones who don't get themselves up in a tizzy because of a terminology that has been put to use for decades: Labeling this as some sort of SJW agenda or what have you is quite a stretch.

 

It's not like this is something along the lines of bill C-16 where the government enacts laws of any kind to legislate speech, this is a choice that has been made on a voluntary basis.

[Master O]

4 minutes ago, Benjogami said:

 

There's no slippery slope because this isn't censorship in the first place. You are still free to talk and write and opine about slavery all you want. You can even write a game in Python that glorifies slavery if you'd like. This is simply optimizing some terminology.

 

But yes, "anyone following the current culture" knows why this is upsetting to lots of people.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY

 

[indigotyrian]

1 minute ago, Sparktimus said:

That's understandable, but here's the thing. No one is policing what people can/cannot say in this case. No one is going to be "forced" to use those specific terms because that's literally impossible. It's mainly just a discussion of archaic terms that could be taken in the wrong context by certain individuals. Like the nature of all forms of language, words and meanings evolve and get supplanted by other words or meanings, and this is another case of that.

The OP is literally about forcing a change of language. Did you read it?

[jerrysheppy]

Yeah, it's worth keeping in mind that this isn't the government threatening to throw Python's administrators (or whatever the word is) in jail, or even people boycotting Python over it.  (People would be within their personal rights to boycott Python for it, of course, but personally I would consider it excessive.)

 

It appears to simply be people having made a case for changing the use of terminology, and the leaders saying "hey, that sounds like an okay idea" and doing it.  I assume if there was actually a compelling reason to keep the terminology, they would have taken that into account.

 

1 minute ago, segfault said:

The OP is literally about forcing a change of language. Did you read it?

 

"Forcing" in this context seems to just mean that the creators made a decision to change it with a new version.  It's like complaining that a new computer game "forces" me to update my graphics drivers.  Like yeah, the word "force" has a meaning in that context, but it's not like Big Brother is coming for you.

[indigotyrian]

A good reason would be adhering to a standard that exists across the fucking board, but I dunno. People get pissy at Microsoft for breaking these rules in their own languages, but it's okay when my buddies do it so they can feel good about doing fake activism.

[Sparktimus]

3 minutes ago, segfault said:

The OP is literally about forcing a change of language. Did you read it?

What I'm saying is that if you slip up and accidentally say "master" or "slave" or something when discussing programming, I doubt anyone is going to ban or chastise you for doing so. At most, all you'll get is "oh do you mean child/parent?". This isn't going to be some kind of Orwellian big brother enforcement of what you can/cannot say.

[Xcalibur]

10 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

On the other hand, if it costs you nothing to replace it with a term like "parent and child" or "leader and follower" then why not?

it's death by a thousand cuts. one day it's a programming term, then it's the pronouns you're allowed to use in a card game, then it's posting wrongthink on social media and getting deplatformed, etc. this small example is a skirmish in a much larger offensive waged by a new brand of moral authoritarians.

[indigotyrian]

Just now, Sparktimus said:

What I'm saying is that if you slip up and accidentally say "master" or "slave" or something when discussing programming, I doubt anyone is going to ban you for doing so. At most, all you'll get is "oh do you mean child/parent?". This isn't going to be some kind of Orwellian big brother enforcement of what you can/cannot say.

I am absolutely certain people will get banned over this. You know this, and you're playing interference because you want to feel like you're doing the world a service. Meanwhile, Flint still doesn't have clean drinking water.

[Sparktimus]

2 minutes ago, segfault said:

I am absolutely certain people will get banned over this. You know this, and you're playing interference because you want to feel like you're doing the world a service. Meanwhile, Flint still doesn't have clean drinking water.

I think you're taking this issue just a tad out of context. I fail to see what bad infrastructure has to do with the creators of a language wanting to supplant one or two words for something else.

 

People are only going to get banned over this if they start acting like an overreactionary child over it and making a bigger issue out of it than it needs to be. Hell, I'm one of the people that is a proponent of free speech and thinks people should be allowed to use whatever words they like and that people should stop being overly sensitive about inoffensive things, but changing a programming language and changing everyday language are two separate issues entirely.

[Xcalibur]

10 minutes ago, Benjogami said:

 

There's no slippery slope because this isn't censorship in the first place. You are still free to talk and write and opine about slavery all you want. You can even write a game in Python that glorifies slavery if you'd like. This is simply optimizing some terminology.

 

But yes, "anyone following the current culture" knows why this is upsetting to lots of people.

by 'optimizing terminology' you mean subtly controlling the use of language to adhere to ideological orthodoxy. that's what this is about, and that's why a seemingly small decision is actually of greater import; especially when it's made due to SJW influence and pressure.

[Liberation]

It seems an over-reaction really. But if that's the way it is then so be it.

 

I'm sure black car mechanics/technicians don't get pissed off every time they work on a car because of master/slave cylinders as @RonnieJamesDiner pointed out.

 

However does it actually do any harm changing terminology, no.

 

EDIT: @segfault Shut up you muppet.

 

 

[Xcalibur]

6 minutes ago, Sparktimus said:

It's their language, and they're free to make any changes they see fit. That is quite literally freedom of speech.

Yes, but when those changes happen to be in line with a current ideology that is heavily in favor of censorship, that leads me to believe that this was not done on a whim, but rather due to language policing and moral authoritarianism. If the devs did this to avoid repercussions from using bad words, then it is an example of censorship.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

The term doesn't even describe the systems well and is too vague. Am all for the stupid term disappearing from computer science since all it does is confuse too many people -especially new students- as to what the system model actually is. Is it centralized?! Decentralized?! Hybrid?! something else? who the hell knows with that dumb name.

[Phade102]

I think its stupid. Master represents the primary, and slave represents the secondary/tertiary and beyond. Theres nothing wrong with it, they arent living things.

[Liberation]

5 minutes ago, Pegg said:

The term doesn't even describe the systems well and is too vague. Am all for the stupid term disappearing from computer science since all it does is confuse too many people -especially new students- as to what the system model actually is. Is it centralized?! Decentralized?! Hybrid?! something else? who the hell knows with that dumb name.

 

Changing master/slave to adult/child probably wouldn't change that. I could be wrong though.

[Sparktimus]

16 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

Yes, but when those changes happen to be in line with a current ideology that is heavily in favor of censorship, that leads me to believe that this was not done on a whim, but rather due to language policing and moral authoritarianism. If the devs did this to avoid repercussions from using bad words, then it is an example of censorship.

Except it's not really. Again, I'm really doubting that any programmer is going to actively go around and indict people for using master/slave. As I've stated, the contingency of people who truly get offended by terms like that are very very small. I don't think anyone in this thread even are going to get enraged for the use of the archaic terms because they know the context and can actually think before they react. Nothing is going to be censored or forced upon anyone unless the government steps in and says "okay guys no one can say master/slave anymore" which is very unlikely to happen.

[Pirx]

the fuck is this? some all too politically correct bullshit cooked up by people with too much time on their hands?

[Xcalibur]

9 minutes ago, Pegg said:

The term doesn't even describe the systems well and is too vague. Am all for the stupid term disappearing from computer science since all it does is confuse too many people -especially new students- as to what the system model actually is. Is it centralized?! Decentralized?! Hybrid?! something else? who the hell knows with that dumb name.

if that was the issue, I wouldn't complain at all. but the article says "python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master/slave terms". it's not about terminology or function. the article makes it clear that this is yet another example of language policing by a new generation of moral authoritarians.

they can use different terms if they want to. they should also be able to use master/slave terms without fear of reprisal for violating ideological orthodoxy.

[jerrysheppy]

23 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

by 'optimizing terminology' you mean subtly controlling the use of language to adhere to ideological orthodoxy.

 

I mean if saying "all else being equal, it's good to be considerate of people" is "subtly controlling the use of language to adhere to ideological orthodoxy" then hoo boy the sky is the limit.  

 

Anyway: A few people have alluded to the concept of Orwellian language in this thread, which makes me think that they don't actually know what they're talking about, because a key principle of Orwellian thought policing is to make it impossible to think or speak coherently of a given concept at all.  To use an example from Orwell's "The Principles of Newspeak" itself, it's still possible in Newspeak to say something like "Big Brother is ungood", but that would be considered simply absurd, a contradiction in terms.  The concept itself is rendered no longer sensical by the thought police.

 

Here, it seems obvious that no such loss of meaning has taken place, because the items in question still exist and fulfill exactly the same function as they used to.  (or, in the event their functionality was changed at some point, it has nothing necessarily to do with the terminology change.) If you called it a slave yesterday, you can call it a child (or whatever) today and nothing about the concept or its utility has changed.  At least, that is my understanding as a layman with regards to programming.

[Xcalibur]

2 minutes ago, Sparktimus said:

Except it's not really. Again, I'm really doubting that any programmer is going to actively go around and indict people for using master/slave. As I've stated, the contingency of people who truly get offended by terms like that are very very small. I don't think anyone in this thread even are going to get enraged for the use of the archaic terms because they know the context and can actually think before they react. Nothing is going to be censored or forced upon anyone unless the government steps in and says "okay guys no one can say master/slave anymore" which is very unlikely to happen.

like I said, it's a slippery slope. it starts small, and it escalates.

 

again, from the article: "Programming language bites its tongue to be more inclusive"

and ""For diversity reasons, it would be nice to try to avoid 'master' and 'slave' terminology which can be associated to slavery," he explained in his bug report, noting that there have been complaints but they've been filed privately – presumably to avoid being dragged into a fractious flame war.

 

it states quite clearly that they were strong-armed into this by Social Justice ideology.

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

"python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master/slave terms". it's not about terminology or function. the article makes it clear that this is yet another example of language policing by a new generation of moral authoritarians.

It doesn't say pythion has been forced to remove those terms and come up with new ones. There is no policing going on here. The people who "do python" decided that they wanted to change something about their product, for lack of a better expression. There is no agenda going on here that forces some sort of ideology on anybody.

[dew]

12 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

Yes, but when those changes happen to be in line with a current ideology that is heavily in favor of censorship, that leads me to believe that this was not done on a whim, but rather due to language policing and moral authoritarianism. If the devs did this to avoid repercussions from using bad words, then it is an example of censorship.

And is your opinion based on being a disgruntled python programmer, or rather a participant of the larger scale cultural war in which the lib sjws must be owned for their attempts to silence the (sane, reasonable and beautiful) conservatives, even if you don't really give a damn about the topic at hand? You know, just so that we get informed on your particular bias as well.

 

I program for moneys and I don't care except for one thing: why parent/child, ffs? Every third concept in programming is called parent/child, don't make things more confusing dammit!

[Cruduxy Pegg]

11 minutes ago, Liberation said:

 

Changing master/slave to adult/child probably wouldn't change that. I could be wrong though.

 

I never said it should be replaced with an equally ambiguous term :p. 

 

5 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

if that was the issue, I wouldn't complain at all. but the article says "python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master/slave terms". it's not about terminology or function. the article makes it clear that this is yet another example of language policing by a new generation of moral authoritarians.

they can use different terms if they want to. they should also be able to use master/slave terms without fear of reprisal for violating ideological orthodoxy.

 

Yes but my reply was just giving more reasoning to replace the name.

[jerrysheppy]

4 minutes ago, Xcalibur said:

again, from the article: "Programming language bites its tongue to be more inclusive"

and ""For diversity reasons, it would be nice to try to avoid 'master' and 'slave' terminology which can be associated to slavery," he explained in his bug report, noting that there have been complaints but they've been filed privately – presumably to avoid being dragged into a fractious flame war.

 

it states quite clearly that they were strong-armed into this by Social Justice ideology.

 

Gotta say that it's a pretty big jump from "it would be nice" and "there have been complaints" to "they are being strong-armed".  Businesses and organizations disregard complaints all the goddamn time if they don't think those complaints are valid.