Why does that offend anyone? Its just a terminology to describe behaviour of two components.

It doesn't endorse or propagate slavery. I have never heard of an argument that HDDs have masters and slaves so people should too.

If I kill a child thread, does it mean I am 'pro choice' now?

Does creating white-list or black-list makes me become racist?

Those are just word, meaningless and powerless. What really matters is context and intentions, a social nuance that it seems like was thrown out with bath water long time ago.

> Its just a terminology to describe behaviour of two components.

It does? I mean, I’ve used a lot of hard drives and never had one whip another or resell it to punish a friend for disobedience. I’ve also never heard of an enslaved person being put in charge after the plantation master died.

Insisting on using inaccurate terms when better ones exist is a political stance which raises questions about the motives behind putting so much effort into opposing something which costs you nothing.

Yeah, the amount of energy arguing about not changing the terminology; which can be changed to better reflect what it is, is mind boggling.

I can understand arguing what terminology should be used instead. Those arguments tend to be way more civil discussions and don't last long, and a way better set of terminology is set.

Yeah, that’s a much better conversation because it often flushed out that the same terms were being used for things which weren’t quite the same (hot failover, read-replica, etc.) and someone who has more experience with one tool won’t think a different one works the same way.

What energy? It's not like we're hosting rallies or founding political parties on this.

> "not if some people consider it offensive. that alone is a sufficient reason to support this change, even if you don't think it's necessary."

I looked at article and taking offense at some of the words for which changes have been proposed by Twitter is really far-fetched. Some examples:

- Grandfathered -> legacy status

- Sanity check -> quick check, confidence check, coherence check

- Dummy value -> placeholder value, sample value

Is there really a plausible case for somebody to be offended by the phrase "sanity check"?

I hadn't seen that "sanity check" and "dummy value" were being replaced too until I see this comment. I am _dumbfounded_.

But I suppose we will have to replace that word too.

Jfc.

This is probably because of the huge social stigma around mental illness.

By describing someone as insane, or “crazy” rather than trying to understand what is truly going on for them, it is a dismissal of their actual needs. Whether you want to deal with that level of detail has a lot to do with your relationship with that person.

But this matters a lot when it comes to the police who are called to handle people having mental health emergencies.

These suggestions all make some sense to me. The outrage at just dealing with the changes does not.

When there are too many changes, being asked to "just deal" becomes exclusionary itself. I know of communities like that, where most people are unwelcome because they don't know the huge set of rules on how they're supposed to talk, and I don't want programming to become one of them.

Who actually considers it offensive? Have you ever worked with a software engineer who ever mentioned it offending them?

A software engineer who would find it offensive is most likely the literal minority of a company.

Language simply doesn't work by the hecklers veto.

That alone is sufficient reason not to support this change, otherwise we will run out of words pretty soon.

“Soon.”

Really.

Really. I mentioned this downthread, but the headline undersells the extent of Twitter's change; they've also dropped the terms "dummy value" and "guys".

"guys" is literally literally defined in the dictionary[1] as:

> used to address a group of people of either sex: >Come on, you guys, let's go.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/guy