> hysterical

That's not called for.

As for the rest, it seems to me that it's slavery based on race that is the biggest motivator to changing the term. Obviously all slavery is a horrible problem, but other kinds of slavery are much less relevant to the terminology debate.

It seemed to be a totally factual description of the poster. Wrapping your comment up in a "that's not called for" false-call for civility while ignoring the reality on the ground that our friends, our fellow citizens may be affected by this kind of ongoing language, yet people REFUSE to help, because of... why?

Leon, why did you flip the tortoise on its back? You aren't helping it, why is that?

This doesn't meaningfully help the people on the ground. Even for a positive change, the worst possible outcome of this is people feeling like they've done their part and then putting less effort into changing things like discriminatory social policies.

And I'm still not seeing which part was "hysterical".

No, it's an insult, and any sentiment expressed in using it is entirely subjective opinion, not "fact".

> false-call for civility

Is this another "fact"? Got the proof that the call for civility is false? Otherwise this is bad-faith.

> ignoring the reality

The "reality" you describe is disputed.

> people REFUSE to help

they refuse to participate in a bad-faith, antagonistic discourse. There is no attempt at "help" here, just demanding your perspective be accepted as fact, and insulting all who do not obey.

Sure it's called for, and you're being irrational and hysterical, too.

Exactly who besides you says "slavery based on race that is the biggest motivator to changing the term" and why? Give me some evidence, or retract what you said, because it's outrageously wrong. And where did you get that ridiculous unfounded belief? And what motivates you to propagate it, despite it being false? Just because it "seems to you" doesn't mean there's any truth to it.

It seems to the person who I was replying to, and many other people in this thread, that slavery no longer happens, and they're terribly wrong. Do you also falsely believe there is no more slavery, too? (Yes you do, I see from your other comment: "Nobody is enslaving anyone" -Dylan16807) Is that the basis of your false belief that "it seems to me that it's slavery based on race that is the biggest motivator to changing the term"?

It really puzzles me what motivates people like you to make such unsubstantiated statements whitewashing slavery, and then feign outrage at having your feelings hurt, while so many human beings are currently suffering from slavery every day, more than at any time in history, that you refuse to acknowledge. Can you explain why?

Renaming things does nothing to help anyone. Just further reinforces the idea that we need to tiptoe around certain demographics, propagating an isolating us-and-them mentality.

I think/hope you wrote "tiptoe around" when you meant "respecting the opinions".

The problem is the us and them mentality exists, is very prevalent but basically invisible to or ignored by those on one side of the divide. Addressing issue already present isn't significantly furthering the divide, it's making people aware of what's already there. All the people saying "look how divided we are now!" fail to realise this has always been the way.

Sorry, how is NOT using the terms master and slave helping actual slaves? I used to be bullied in school when I was young. I'm sure if people removed the term nerd and bully from some software projects I'd be much better off. Thank god for the word police.

In what context can we use the terms master and slave?

The term slave means to be controlled by another entity in its most basic definition. Just because there are loads of people who are slaves in the world doesn't make that term less accurate for its other uses.

I’ve never seen the words nerd or bully in code or software architecture, so that seems to be a spurious example.

Businesses already tend not to use sensitive words, especially publicly. This is just adding to that list. For example, whilst you can kill a process we don’t use the word murder. Same for lots of other negatively emotional words.

People do get hung up on naming & terminology. But as has been mentioned elsewhere, master/slave is often chosen through convention when other names would be clearer. We have a whitelist application at work that is actually an event routing gateway. If we renamed it it’d be easier to explain.

To me it seems an easy task to not use master/slave and white/black when I’m naming things, not something worth arguing about, especially if there’s a chance it removes some negativity for some people. I’m happy to spend a few minutes helping someone with a chore and I see this as the same low level of effort and impact.

I understand the need to change the words if a different word is clearer. But the intent behind this particular case is more of a matter of bowing to the outrage culture rather than for usefulness purposes.

It's not "outrage culture", it's being considerate and thoughtful, which is something most of us practice every day.

You can frame it as "bowing down" either way. The other option is to "bow down" to those who do no want to change but have no good reasons beyond that it's what they are used to and, typically, negative partisanship (that on principle they object to anything promoted by the other side of the political divide, simply because). People need to find better arguments than emotionally & illogically driven defensiveness.

I think the same argument can be had about the other side. People who push for changing words like this need to find better arguments that emotionally driven ones.

The other option is to have a nuanced debate from both sides where one side isn't thought of as hateful and evil. One side is saying "hey this is a slippery slope" the other side is saying "no you're wrong and you're what's wrong with the world today".

Also, where has my defensiveness been at all illogical or emotional? The arguments presented against doing this seem pretty sound from the people who can explain their reasons.

It is outrage culture. It wasn't a problem for decades and all of a sudden it is.

If language is so unimportant, then it doesn't matter if things are renamed, right?

But language DOES matter, and it DOES help people. It's a bit more abstract and decoupled, but shit, you're supposed to be a coder (you ARE on a programming forum), so I'm sure you can handle adding 1 and 1 and getting to 2.

I don't think anything you've said addresses anything I've said...

You can lead a horse to water ...

Then address what I said: Do you deny the evidence I just posted about there being more slavery today than ever before in history? What is your evidence that "Slavery was long gone and finished when master/slave began being used in computer science"?

So you're against renaming the Redskins? Explain why. Exactly how does that take away your freedom and cramp your lifestyle?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Redskins_name_contr...

https://www.mediaite.com/sports/breaking-washington-redskins...

>BREAKING: Washington Redskins Expected to Announce Retirement of Team Name on Monday

You are talking as if changing the name of a variable in your computer program will actually do something to help those affected by slavery. I hope you don't actually belive that.