[stepvhen]

An interesting other side of the coin here: Emily Wilson, in her recent translation of The Odyssey made it a point to call the slaves in Odysseus' house slaves. In other translations, this idea was glossed over, the people called different things, avoiding the term. Wilson instead aimed to stay truer to the culture the work was written in, rather than appealing to contemporary ideals, or what have you.

It makes sense, though, with this context as well. The issue at hand is calling things what they in fact are. In the Odyssey, there is a source text and culture, where persons who were slaves were called such. In codebases, however, we are working with abstract concepts in the first. There is no necessary historical reason to maintain certain language. Abstract concepts are such because they do not exist out in the world, and so have no "actual" name.

[bobas2]

Some words are created to do intentional harm to others. Others simply have two meanings, one innocuous in its usage another, derogatory to some group of people. The mariam webster dictionary recognizes the word slave as: a device (such as the printer of a computer) that is directly responsive to another.

source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave

[wink]

I think what you're missing here is that it was first in the computer sense used in a time when all this discussion hadn't happen yet. So one the one hand, you're correct, it has this meaning. But there was a time where "negro" was a word with a neutral (to a certain kind of people) meaning - just look up any newspaper from a hundred years ago. So even if we're not having the discussion if the term is appropriate or not (not my point right now) - you're arguing with a tautology. As words can enter "standard" dictionaries, so can they leave.

[swebs]

And who knows what innocuous word today will be deemed "problematic" by the social justice warriors tomorrow.

[Upvoter33]

And who knows who will derogatorily and condescendingly be deemed a "social justice warrior" simply for trying to be a decent human and remove the world "slave" from a code base, on the off chance that some people might truly feel the pain of that word and its ugly history.