[hunter2_]

The deprecation of master/slave is something that crossed my mind some 20 years ago when I was setting jumpers on a IDE optical drive. What shall we substitute slave with, though, given that master is now main? Apache httpd has long used "worker"...

How about black hat (noun or proper noun) and white hat? They're identically problematic as blacklist/whitelist -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism

[pfranz]

I've seen "worker", "main", "parent/child", and "primary/replica" used as a replacement depending on the context.

[choko]

I've heard complains from some in various tech industries that parent/child is non-inclusive. I'm not saying I think it should be changed, but doesn't the logic of the people advocating these changes demand that all terms be as inclusive as possible?

[hunter2_]

For that matter, "worker" implies something along the lines of "working class" or "unskilled laborer" which isn't all that friendly of a metaphor either. Kind of tough to think of a way to express "doesn't think for onesself, just takes orders" without being mean.