[kingnight]

Really surprised to see a comment pool that is completely negative.

Wouldn’t primary/replica and allowlist/denylist be more explicit anyway?

Society doesn’t have to just do one thing. And because whatever momentum is causing this to happen now, doesn’t negate other reasons why it should happen regardless, and shouldn’t be a reason for it not to either.

[zdragnar]

Blacklist has been part of the English language for roughly 400 years, and is far more common than "denylist" or the other alternatives being used such as "blocklist". There is no reason to argue that those trend are any more accurate (not to mention it has never been about race).

As for master/slave, I think changing over to primary/replica makes a bit more sense, though then we should also ban the word "robot" while we are at it.

[adsjhdashkj]

While i'm not opposed to this, i do wonder where it will stop. Are financial phrases of "in the red, in the black" also bad? Is the word police bad?

The police one is especially interesting. If the word police becomes banned, wouldn't police themselves simply change their name? Start using Law Enforcement more prominently, etc - and then how long until Law Enforcement becomes a bad word like Police did?

Words definitely shape culture. Using "gay" as a derogatory term like i did when i grew up is clearly wrong, it shapes culture in my view. I _could_ see the argument for whitelist/blacklist also shaping culture, though drastically less i'd imagine. However i think we need to take care not to change things that themselves are not defining culture, like Police. The Police reaction is, i think, effectively an avoidance of a trigger. Of which, the science seems unclear on if even avoiding triggers is healthy (at least, based on a recently study i saw, but did not read).

With that said, if i were to use my comment as logic to decide this.. `master/slave` seems perfectly fine. Slave does not imply who is the slave. If you make associations to a specific group of slaves throughout history, and even currently, the word does not seem to be the cause. Removing it from a dictionary will not help anyone. Compare master/slave to whitemaster/blackslave. The latter would _obviously_ have a .. not so implicit implication. The former, i don't feel implies anything.

On the other hand, blacklist/whitelist could - perhaps - have implied associations in a way that master/slave does not. I could easily support removing that, because the implication seems clear.

We should take care to draw the lines in these complex topics where they might shape our culture. Not removing triggers.

[strictfp]

But then "Gay" just meant happy. And "retard" means slightly slowed down (development). Those were probably all decent words from the start.

The words aren't the problem, their usages are. I'm not convinced that we should allow the meaning of words to slip and replace them when they become offensive.

[miked85]

> Really surprised to see a comment pool that is completely negative

I think people may (hopefully) be getting fed up with being politically correct to the point of finding something everywhere they look that they are offended by and needs to be changed.

[jack_h]

> Wouldn’t primary/replica and allowlist/denylist be more explicit anyway?

Primary/replica would be far, far less explicit for describing the relationship between the CPU and an ADC (or ethernet switch, or accelerometer) over something like the SPI bus.

To be fair, the suggestions in the link are more encompassing.

[detaro]

Controller/Peripheral has been a recent suggestion in electronics.

[huffmsa]

Because the origins.of the term isn't racially based. You're seeing race and color where there isn't any.

> The state papers of Charles II say "If any innocent soul be found in this black list, let him not be offended at me, but consider whether some mistaken principle or interest may not have misled him to vote".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting

[sebazzz]

I think there really isn't a good answer. One "side" argues that the original intention doesn't matter, and the current intent of the word doesn't matter and therefore should be changed. The other "side" argues that it shouldn't be changed for exactly the same reason.

But it keeps us busy :-)

[acdha]

Yes, it’s an old usage just as niggardly or denigrate predate a word they’re often assumed to be derived from. The point is that people have to think about that in a context where they otherwise wouldn’t, and it costs so very little to avoid that.

Many projects have replaced these terms with more accurate ones in the past and it’s a very minor shift. It took very little time to do and years later, only aggrieved right-wing activists are still talking about it. Everyone else is just using software without the distraction of wondering about the origins of the terms they’re using.

[Dylan16807]

No, it's not like niggardly. Blacklist is a common word and 'black' does not resemble any offensive words.

[acdha]

We’re talking about black being used in a negative connotation, with no connection to color. I mentioned it only as another example where the origin of the term is harmless but there is still a good reason why you might want to avoid using a particular word.

[alephu5]

What about these terms?

Black/White magic White lie Dark patterns Black/Grey/White hat Black comedy Whitewash

Personally I feel these usages of black/white don't come from skin colour, rather from something like night/day.

[RepAgent]

The response is completely negative because the suggestion is just insane.

I'm a black man from a black neighborhood. We like Joe Biden. When Joe speaks freely without preparation, he makes racists and tone-deaf comments continuously. Sometimes they are really horrible. We don't care because we understand the era he comes from and we understand the difference between intentional and unintentional. He has evolved at least little and aspires to do more. Perfect is the enemy of good.

We know that when programmers talk about master/slave, they don't even think about slavery. It's just damn good metaphor. I might get fleeting negative association but I'm not offended. Offense is taken, not given. No need to disarm the world from strong metaphors just to show others that we are not racist.

Racism is power structures, not in innocent use of metaphors.

[yakshaving_jgt]

I think the [usually white and American] people pushing hardest for this insanity will use black people as a political tool, and then once a black person contradicts them will accuse them of having “internalised oppression”.

Sigh.

[blub]

These kind of changes are problematic any way I look at it. Even from a purely technical perspective, words like master, slave and blacklist have entered the vocabulary of many software engineers from Europe, they are are taught in school curricula and courses and I'm pretty sure that they won't change now because the Linux kernel maintainers were bit by the politically correct bug.

[rgoulter]

> Wouldn’t primary/replica and allowlist/denylist be more explicit anyway?

Possibly! But the main reasons I've seen people are arguing in favour of different terms are moral rather than practical. - I don't think moral reasoning mixes well with practical reasoning. (If it were morally worse, but practically better, would it be better overall?).

[slfnflctd]

> surprised to see a comment pool that is completely negative

You should see the Slashdot thread. It is amazing how hard people will fight for the status quo, even if it's over a small change that doesn't really hurt anyone. It's always a good time for a code review, anyway.

[slfnflctd]

[After watching the above comment score bounce around more than I usually see around here:]

Changing names in software isn't really that hard if you understand the code base. It can even help you understand it better-- and we do it all the time for non-politically-charged stuff. If you find yourself feeling emotional & indignant when someone wants to change a word that bothers them, you should look real close at why. Does it really hurt you that much? Is it honestly hampering your freedom of expression, or any other actually meaningful freedom you have? I'd like to see a good argument for that. And if it doesn't... why are you so upset?

It's quite telling how much this pisses people off. As soon as race enters into it, it's obvious that most minds are already made up. For the last 6-10 years, racists and misogynists have become increasingly bold, and their insidious 'arguments' poison all discourse. I'm done putting up with their sophistry.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "For the last 6-10 years, racists and misogynists have become increasingly bold, and their insidious 'arguments' poison all discourse."

Being a minority myself who opposes these pointless language changes and seeing plenty of black/minority comments with similar opposition, may I point out that "everybody who disagrees me is a racist" just doesn't work particularly well as a rationalization?

[slfnflctd]

Well, I heard an interview on NPR a couple days ago from a young Black woman who was surprised & hurt when she discovered some of these terms and is part of the effort to change them, so there's not exactly a consensus.

Also, whoever is saying "everybody who disagrees with me is a racist" is probably wrong, unless they're talking about a specifically racist thing. I don't do that. However, you cannot deny the recent increase in actual white nationalism and neo-nazis, which is what I was referring to.