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Twitter removing "master", "slave", and "blacklist" to be more inclusi

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    #152
    timmyntc
    Registered Users Posts: 6,901 ✭✭✭timmyntc


    In hardware design all interfaces use Master-Slave terminology. To change that across the industry would run into the billions likely. And also, what would be the alternative? Master-Slave, like it or not, is quite concise. Master transmits, Slave receives, and if necessary sends a response to master. Master initiates all transactions.

    Things like blacklist are even more ridiculous though - the term blacklist comes from Medievil England, employers kept the names of bad employees in black books - i.e. you were 'blacklisted'. Nothing racial about it.


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    #153
    Bob the Builder
    Registered Users Posts: 2,919 ✭✭✭Bob the Builder


    timmyntc wrote: »
    In hardware design all interfaces use Master-Slave terminology. To change that across the industry would run into the billions likely. And also, what would be the alternative? Master-Slave, like it or not, is quite concise. Master transmits, Slave receives, and if necessary sends a response to master. Master initiates all transactions.

    Things like blacklist are even more ridiculous though - the term blacklist comes from Medievil England, employers kept the names of bad employees in black books - i.e. you were 'blacklisted'. Nothing racial about it.

    And the irony is that using a master/slave architecture actually prevents things in computing like "race conditions", which have absolutely nothing to do with race. And usually the master is elected by consensus and sometimes even rotates frequently.


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    #154
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Strumms wrote: »
    The only proof, is what they themselves tell me, and have done over time. Not presuming anything, being told, pure and simple :)

    You haven't stated that you have this very conversation with them, all "40%" of them, you said you knew what they would say conclusively, so you are in fact presuming.

    Also, what has your (presumed) African heritage co-workers have to do with this topic? Are they African American? Because the thread is about Twitter's response, an American company with a unique and recent history to slavery, segregation, and racism.


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    #155
    gailforecast
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 140 ✭✭gailforecast


    Bob the Builder wrote: »
    As a developer myself, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. There's a huuuuuuge amount of work required in this and for almost zilch reward.

    Diversity comes from hiring a diverse set of people for your team - in fact, our team has something like 28 different nationalities among 75 people. That's real diversity, not this git branch naming nonsense.

    It's not even master/slave - it's more like master/develop or master/feature. And in other scenarios, master/slave describes perfectly what's happening - and there's no alternative naming - leader/follower, teacher/pupil, parent/child? None of these accurately describe to the same accuracy, what a master/slave relationship is.

    Anyone who works in a tech company and is in a position to make these calls should know better.

    I recently ran a script to “kill dangling children”. That was fun.


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    #156
    Strumms
    Registered Users Posts: 24,931 ✭✭✭✭Strumms


    Stateofyou wrote: »
    You haven't stated that you have this very conversation with them, all "40%" of them, you said you knew what they would say conclusively, so you are in fact presuming.

    Also, what has your (presumed) African heritage co-workers have to do with this topic? Are they African American? Because the thread is about Twitter's response, an American company with a unique and recent history to slavery, segregation, and racism.

    Nope, I know by what they tell me .. American company, with slavery history hmmmmm, right. Don’t know who you are referring to there. :)


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    #157
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Bob the Builder wrote: »
    As a developer myself, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. There's a huuuuuuge amount of work required in this and for almost zilch reward.

    Diversity comes from hiring a diverse set of people for your team - in fact, our team has something like 28 different nationalities among 75 people. That's real diversity, not this git branch naming nonsense.

    It's not even master/slave - it's more like master/develop or master/feature. And in other scenarios, master/slave describes perfectly what's happening - and there's no alternative naming - leader/follower, teacher/pupil, parent/child? None of these accurately describe to the same accuracy, what a master/slave relationship is.

    Anyone who works in a tech company and is in a position to make these calls should know better.

    I would guess that IF this change were to cost millions, it was deemed not to be inherently worth 'zilch' to do so?

    Diversity does have to do with hiring, you're right. And a company that is more welcoming to a diverse work-force, one example by eliminating hurtful language, is one way to attract and retain diverse talent.

    It seems they knew better, so they decided to do better.


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    #158
    CrankyHaus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,281 ✭✭✭CrankyHaus


    Pushing IT workers around is one thing, they're used to it, but I'm looking forward to the reaction from tradesmen when they're told that saying male or female connections is hate speech.


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    #159
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 19,011 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    Deleted User wrote: »
    Twitter engineers replacing racially loaded tech terms like 'master,' 'slave'

    No.. Not from their site's content or tweets.. From its codebase.

    Since when does a programming language need to be more inclusive? Last year apparently. Some worthless cúnt who works there took issue with it and decided to save the world from racism and slavery.

    But more importantly, how on Earth are "master" or "slave" racially loaded terms when there are more slaves now than ever before, and they're not all black, and the majority of slaves are owned by people of their own race? Why is America trying to force this idea on us that only black people have ever been slaves and only white people have ever been slave owners?

    If they cared about black slavery, they should campaign for black people to stop selling black people to black people in Africa. But I guess it's easier to spend a few mill changing a programming language.

    There's a relative understanding to be had with "master" and "slave", even if their elimination is utterly stupid.

    But "blacklist" has nothing to do with either slavery or black people.

    However...Twitter being dumb? Quelle Surprise.


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    #160
    Carfacemandog
    Registered Users Posts: 2,042 ✭✭✭Carfacemandog


    KiKi III wrote: »
    How can you possibly be this upset about something this small?

    It's part of a larger overall sense of control, not over people but over the discourse, as the tide passes them by. Happens to a good few people during their lives, some younger than others.

    It's somewhat related to people talking about getting more conservative as they got older. Largely these people didn't, the world just changes and typically gets more liberal over time, while these people stayed in the same place.


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    #161
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Strumms wrote: »
    Nope, I know by what they tell me .. American company, with slavery history hmmmmm, right. Don’t know who you are referring to there. :)

    It's clear you're lost in the thread.

    Clue is in the title: Twitter, which is HQ'd in America. America's history with slavery. Always happy to help. :)


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    #162
    Bob the Builder
    Registered Users Posts: 2,919 ✭✭✭Bob the Builder


    Stateofyou wrote: »
    It seems they knew better, so they decided to do better.

    But it's not better. It's pandering to people who know no better, and it's ripping the soul from tech companies.


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    #163
    timmyntc
    Registered Users Posts: 6,901 ✭✭✭timmyntc


    Stateofyou wrote: »
    I would guess that IF this change were to cost millions, it was deemed not to be inherently worth 'zilch' to do so?

    Diversity does have to do with hiring, you're right. And a company that is more welcoming to a diverse work-force, one example by eliminating hurtful language, is one way to attract and retain diverse talent.

    It seems they knew better, so they decided to do better.

    I'd say they've either started a new project to replace all this stuff, with minimal resources, and it'll drag on indefinitely (who knows if it'll ever finish) simply so that they can publicly say they're doing it and get good PR.

    Either that or the change was forced by higher ups - again in search of good PR. With a complete disregard for resources and time involved.

    In most companies, projects like tidying up codebase and other maintenance type things that would have a definite positive impact, are often not done or kicked to touch indefinitely because it's not the best use of time and resources. So the fact that such a superficial change has been greenlit in twitter HQ, means they're either incredibly over resourced and have all the other more important stuff already done/in progress, or this is being spearheaded by a clueless higher up.


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    #164
    Cordell
    Registered Users Posts: 5,852 ✭✭✭Cordell


    Bob the Builder wrote: »
    And the irony is that using a master/slave architecture actually prevents things in computing like "race conditions", which have absolutely nothing to do with race. And usually the master is elected by consensus and sometimes even rotates frequently.

    What we're experiencing now is a priority inversion where totally irrelevant issues are resolved before actual issues.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_inversion


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    #165
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 19,011 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    StupidLikeAFox wrote: »
    African-american slavery in america is fairly recent and can see why an african american wouldn't be too enthused about having the whole slave/master thing thrown around in the office, even if it is just computer terminology.

    The "whole slave/master thing" has existed for decades in computing terminology (not to mention engineering) and nobody has given a shit before.


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    #166
    timmy_mallet
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,165 ✭✭✭timmy_mallet


    Bob the Builder wrote: »
    As a developer myself...

    "I'm not racist but..."
    "Some of my friends are mixed race actually..."


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    #167
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Bob the Builder wrote: »
    But it's not better. It's pandering to people who know no better, and it's ripping the soul from tech companies.

    Why is it not better? "Ripping the soul" from tech companies? That sounds really dramatic.


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    #168
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 19,011 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    Mr. Karate wrote: »
    Liberals and their White Savior complex.

    Billionaire companies exercising disingenuous PC grandstanding has nothing to do with being "liberal".


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    #169
    timmy_mallet
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,165 ✭✭✭timmy_mallet


    Deleted User wrote: »
    This is a simple question I found on StackOverflow about Java.. Imagine trying to rewrite all of Java to get rid of Master and Slave. Running your own fork of it because it offends an employee and having to redo it every time Java is updated or you add something.

    I can run SparkPi example on the master node, but when I try the same command "spark-submit --class SparkPi --master yarn-client sparkpi.jar 10" on the slave node, I got an error

    I think the pragmatic approach is to not introduce those terms in the future. And where capacity and cost allows, change them.


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    #170
    suicide_circus
    Registered Users Posts: 19,802 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    Look, this **** is just replacing the **** we had in the west when people took religion seriously.

    It's the exact same impulse at play. Pious sanctimony.


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    #171
    begbysback
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,910 ✭✭✭begbysback


    KiKi III wrote: »
    And people call liberals snowflakes...

    As a snowflake myself, I’m utterly offended at being branded a liberal.


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    #172
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Tony EH wrote: »
    The "whole slave/master thing" has existed for decades in computing terminology (not to mention engineering) and nobody has given a shit before.

    That you're aware of, through news (or social media which is also a more recent thing)
    It's only now at this particular point in time and in their culture that certain things are being questioned and flagged for change. Laws have changed as well, and society slowly catches up - and as society catches up there are now more people of colour in America who are more highly trained to be in fields like IT and so things like this comes to light when it's not predominately work held by white people...


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    #173
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 19,011 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    Stateofyou wrote: »
    That you're aware of, through news (or social media which is also a more recent thing)
    It's only now at this particular point in time and in their culture that certain things are being questioned and flagged for change. Laws have changed as well, and society slowly catches up - and as society catches up there are now more people of colour in America who are more highly trained to be in fields like IT and so things like this comes to light when it's not predominately work held by white people...

    Stop making silly excuses for dumb shit.


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    #174
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 17,378 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Stateofyou wrote: »
    I would guess that IF this change were to cost millions, it was deemed not to be inherently worth 'zilch' to do so?

    Diversity does have to do with hiring, you're right. And a company that is more welcoming to a diverse work-force, one example by eliminating hurtful language, is one way to attract and retain diverse talent.

    It seems they knew better, so they decided to do better.

    In the same way that #metoo had women complaining that male colleagues were spending less time with them out of fear, thus affecting their careers, this could simply backfire and cause a smaller company to not hire black people out of fear that one complaint could cause you to have to rewrite an entire codebase, lest your company be deemed racist and you are ruined on social media.

    It isn't hurtful language to the vast vast majority of black people. The fact that a black person has such an exceptionally good job working as an engineer in Twitter is progress. Causing your company to do all this because the word slave could refer to something that happened to your ancestors hundreds of years ago is not progress. Causing colleagues who have used these words for decades to change years of work and all future work is not progress. I guarantee there are black engineers in Twitter who are dreading this nonsensical load of work they're going to have to undertake.
    timmy_mallet wrote: »
    I think the pragmatic approach is to not introduce those terms in the future. And where capacity and cost allows, change them.

    These aren't function and variable names. They underpin the entire application. The more I think of it, the harder it sounds to do. The only way I can describe it is that your application is akin to a book and the language/framework, say Java, is the English language. You're not changing the book; you're changing the language.

    I just hope it doesn't catch on and future releases of popular languages and frameworks adhere to a different naming conventions that cause issues for older software that isn't rewritten accordingly. These things run on code that is open source and pieces may not have been touched in years. Hopefully if Twitter do all this work, they will share it with the community.


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    #175
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Tony EH wrote: »
    Stop making silly excuses for dumb shit.

    If it's so dumb, prove me wrong.


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    #176
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 19,011 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    Stateofyou wrote: »
    If it's so dumb, prove me wrong.

    Don't be ridiculous.

    There's never been any calls to have these terms changed. They've existed for donkey's years in computing and even longer in engineering. You can go back to the the 19th century and hear of master switches.

    The term blacklist comes from the 17th and is likely older and has fuck all to do with a person's skin colour.

    If there was any significant calls to have these terms altered because somebody somewhere might have been "offended", we would have heard about it long before now.

    There wasn't, so we haven't.

    This IS just some useless cunt trying draw attention to themselves and their company's "right on" credentials and NOTHING MORE.

    So, please, stop trying to make silly excuses for dumb shit.


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    #177
    GreeBo
    Registered Users Posts: 27,121 ✭✭✭✭GreeBo


    Padre_Pio wrote: »
    Master and slave are pretty sh*t terms really.

    It's hard to Google troubleshooting stuff.

    Server and Client work better.
    Except they don't mean the same thing.


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    #178
    GreeBo
    Registered Users Posts: 27,121 ✭✭✭✭GreeBo


    20 years ago I had a colleague all me to not use the terms master and slave.

    I have a problem with the why of doing this, not the what.


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    #179
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Deleted User wrote: »
    In the same way that #metoo had women complaining that male colleagues were spending less time with them out of fear, thus affecting their careers, this could simply backfire and cause a smaller company to not hire black people out of fear that one complaint could cause you to have to rewrite an entire codebase, lest your company be deemed racist and you are ruined on social media.

    It isn't hurtful language to the vast vast majority of black people. The fact that a black person has such an exceptionally good job working as an engineer in Twitter is progress. Causing your company to do all this because the word slave could refer to something that happened to your ancestors hundreds of years ago is not progress. Causing colleagues who have used these words for decades to change years of work and all future work is not progress. I guarantee there are black engineers in Twitter who are dreading this nonsensical load of work they're going to have to undertake.



    These aren't function and variable names. They underpin the entire application. The more I think of it, the harder it sounds to do. The only way I can describe it is that your application is akin to a book and the language/framework, say Java, is the English language. You're not changing the book; you're changing the language.

    I just hope it doesn't catch on and future releases of popular languages and frameworks adhere to a different naming conventions that cause issues for older software that isn't rewritten accordingly. These things run on code that is open source and pieces may not have been touched in years. Hopefully if Twitter do all this work, they will share it with the community.

    Oh, so the man who first queried the offensive language as he saw it isn't just a "worthless c@nt," you're now concerned that there will be a more negative effect on him and other black people than there already was? So you care a lot about the backlash on "worthless cnuts" now?

    Dragging in the #metoo movement is a ridiculous comparison. There may be some snowflake reactions where men feel afraid to work with women, but if they acted right in the first place then what's there to be afraid of. Treating women with respect isn't difficult for most men if they're decent.

    Are you presuming now to speak for all Black American people now in saying they're not offended? So the fact that Black people are now working at Twitter is progress, and what, that's good enough? Removing or changing offensive language is progress. The metoo movement made huge strides in awareness and progress for women. Removing statues that celebrate and honor brutal and horrible men in history is progress. Changing laws and introducing Bills to amend the language of the 13th Amendment of their constitution is progress. Etc etc.


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    #180
    flatface
    Registered Users Posts: 719 ✭✭✭flatface


    Bob the Builder wrote: »
    It's not even master/slave - it's more like master/develop or master/feature. And in other scenarios, master/slave describes perfectly what's happening - and there's no alternative naming - leader/follower, teacher/pupil, parent/child? None of these accurately describe to the same accuracy, what a master/slave relationship is.

    I think github are going to change master to main. so it will be main/develop or main/feature which sounds just fine to me. New words pop into tech language at a huge rate, I don't think the changes proposed are that shocking or will be slow to be adopted.


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    #181
    Stateofyou
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,431 ✭✭✭Stateofyou


    Tony EH wrote: »
    Don't be ridiculous.

    There's never been any calls to have these terms changed. They've existed for donkey's years in computing and even longer in engineering. You can go back to the the 19th century and hear of master switches.

    The term blacklist comes from the 17th and is likely older and has fuck all to do with a person's skin colour.

    If there was any significant calls to have these terms altered because somebody somewhere might have been "offended", we would have heard about it long before now.

    There wasn't, so we haven't.

    This IS just some useless cunt trying draw attention to themselves and their company's "right on" credentials and NOTHING MORE.

    So, please, stop trying to make silly excuses for dumb shit.

    The reasons why change is now being affected later rather than sooner has already been posted, and very recently. Please read first before quoting me and saying the same nonsensical stuff.

    And here we have more name calling on people who are speaking up. What's your problem? So if they were able to speak up on issues much earlier in time, would you not also call them a "useless c@nt" trying to get attention? It was okay to do if it was done earlier somehow, but now it's too late? :pac:
    Talk about silly excuses for dumb sh!t because this absolutely wins the award.


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