It sounds way less offensive to those who decry the original terminology’s problematic roots but still keeps its meaning intact.
Oh man, wait till they hear about how I riced both my master and slave servers. I threw so many RGB LEDs on them, they look like recipients of a Fukoshima clown bukkake.
I’ve switched over to using primary/replica for database stuff because it’s more accurate. The replicas don’t always behave themselves so calling them “slaves” implies a level of obedience to the “master” that they don’t have.
I personally think the whole backlash against master/slave in the computing world is people looking for something in their sphere of knowledge to be offended about so they can feel like they are part of “a movement”. Even if some mustache twirling racist was the first “computer guy” to come up with the term and meant it to be offensive, that is not how sane people view it today. So some of the advocates for changing it should stop trying to build it up into some Pizzagate-like conspiracy against black/brown people.
Having said that, I also don’t have any strong attachments to the phrasing either. Phase it out in favor of something that makes everyone happy if that keeps the peace. It is just a term that made sense at the time to describe something. There is nothing stopping us from changing it to something else now if we so choose. It is not erasing heritage or some such nonsense. If anything, people having strong hangups about it if there are better or equally as good terms out there that doesn’t make people uncomfortable is far weirder in my opinion.
The only thing I have somewhat strong opinions about is making it some high priority to go back and erase those terms from solutions that already exist. Change them as you update things, sure, but why create extra work to update something old that is currently working if the only change is not functional and just verbiage. Seems like wasted effort that could be better directed and solving functional issues to me.
No it doesn’t sound bad, words don’t need to be thrown away forever just because they’ve been used to describe unfair treatment. I’m so sick of having to relabel so many things that are so far divorced from the social issues they are used to describe. It’s so pointless and has no impact, the code doesn’t care which is master and which is the slave for they are simply descriptive labels.
Are we supposed to never use the words master or slave ever again?? What’s next?
My dev friends, no matter their race, all say the exact same thing. We still use master over main, come at us I guess.
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I work for s company that suddenly asked to rename a lot of stuff. This had consequences. It cost time, money, and created a disconnect between internal to the dev vocabulary that couldn’t be changed easily and user facing vocabulary. Also we were lucky but this could gave broken some long used API that we are proud not to version because the policy we have internally is “we will NEVER break the API”. And so far, for 8 years we still haven’t.
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I’ve seen ‘Active / Passive’ used, that seems alright. There’s plenty of alternative terms to use without borrowing terminology from sexual roleplay.
Anyway, the Sub is supposed to be the one that’s actually in control for this kind of thing (otherwise you’d just be in an abusive relationship), so that confuses things when you start trying to applying it elsewhere.
I’ve seen ‘Active / Passive’ used, that seems alright
That’s not always an accurate description though.
Consider a redundant two node database system where the second node holds a mirrored copy of the first node. Typically, one node, let’s call it node1, will accept reads and writes from clients and the other node, let’s say node2, will only accept reads from clients but will also implement all writes it receives from node2. That’s how they stay in sync.
In this scenario node2 is not “passive”. It does perform work: it serves reads to clients, and it performs writes, but only the writes received from node1. You could say that node2 slavishly follows what node1 dictates and that node1 is authorative. Master/slave more accurately describes this than active/passive.
There’s plenty of alternative terms to use without borrowing terminology from sexual roleplay.
Do I have news for you …
Top and bottom
Power bottoms would like a word with you.
We’re using server and agent, but im also a proponent of “captain” and “crew”
I mentally replaced cars with boats recently and it’s been inducing nautical terminology everywhere I speak. Cap’n and Crew sounds great for this usage, it feels honest without the shock of great grandpa’s heavyweight authoritarianism. I usually wind up stepping down to Spongebob or Pirates to filter out seriousness too, as long as the packet arrives and the replicas are jolly.
If it’s referring to something like a mother/daughter circuitboard, I’ll use that. If it’s a host/client connection, I’ll use that. If it’s a primary/backup redundancy situation, I’ll use that. And those are just a few examples. There is rarely a good reason to use master/slave nowadays, since most situations already have better descriptors to begin with.
Can’t we just change “slave” to “servant” and carry on?
You could but he has a point. The last time I used master/slave was for IDE drives which was 15+ years ago, and even then only because I happened upon a really old system using IDE drives.
The only thing I see left is “Master” by itself, like master branch. But that makes me think of like a jujitsu master which sounds really cool lol.
Yeah, that definition of “master” is different than master/slave from what I can tell. Think the master copy of an audio recording. There are plenty of perfectly legit uses of “master,” but there’s no reason to use master/slave in this day and age. It was stupid to start doing so to begin with.
There are plenty of perfectly legit uses of “master,”
Like the Digmaster™.
Especially with how we say releases are “cut” from the master branch, it makes a ton of sense.
I’ll keep using master/slave. Political correctness bullshit be damned.
Changing terminology also creates a mess and lots of confusion. I always want to check out the master branch but some people now started calling it main. I don’t mind either way but constantly changing it is horrible
I’ve seen publisher/subscriber out in the wild.
Gotta be careful with that one when talking data streams though.
A pub/sub pattern implemented for message queue flow is available in most cloud (and on prem) solutions.
If anyone is offended by this CS term - you are a certified soyflake.
Looking at your self-description in your profile, you don’t seem like the type to be a raging MAGA idiot, but saying things like “soyflake” really makes you sounds like one.
Whatever you say. I hate it when people get offended by the most irrelevant things, and the word “soyflake” seems perfect for those kinds of people. My invention btw - it’s a combo of soy and snowflake that just came to me as I was writing the above comment. Also, I don’t really like Trump. But I also don’t like Harris even more. Trump is also friendlier to crypto. Harris leans way too much into Marxist ideas for my taste and also I hate wars and the deep state (which is more related to the left than the right). But don’t get me wrong, I also hate hyper-religious MAGA low-IQ hillbillys. I REALLY, REALLY like Elon tho. And I like how he is fighting the obvious left-wing bias we have in cyberspace. I’m a neurospicy guy with spicy multidimensional beliefs. Hate me, but that’s how I am, at least for the moment. I’m fairly fluid when it comes to my beliefs. I’m for example pretty deep into a conspiracy arc atm, but that might change.
But why master and slave would be a problem to begin with. I’m still using it in git. I think people that have problem with it must have serious issues. It’s a US American thing. Makes no sense.
Slavery is a world wide problem.
