this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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It sounds way less offensive to those who decry the original terminology's problematic roots but still keeps its meaning intact.

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[–] andrew_s@piefed.social 167 points 3 weeks ago (17 children)

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.

[–] cdf12345@lemm.ee 47 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] macaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 44 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Power bottoms would like a word with you.

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 23 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hopefully more than a word

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[–] SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nz 21 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

The issue is acronyms; there's millions of products, schematics, datasheets, and manuals that refer to them as MISO and MOSI with no further explanation. Any new standard that doesn't fit runs into the 15-competing-standards problem, and ought to be followed by an "AKA MISO" every time it's used.

[–] hidetaka@lemmy.mats.ooo 35 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I've seen "Main" and "Secondary" be used exactly for this reason, as they keep the same first letter so don't require acronyms to be changed.

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[–] Fades@lemmy.world 126 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (25 children)

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.

[–] FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 67 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Honestly, while the controversy is incredibly stupid, it's not something to get worked up about. Not good for your heart 😜

You don't have to relabel anything, just keep using old names for old stuff and maybe consider switching to main for your next GitHub project? It's honestly not that big of a deal.

[–] ScreamingFirehawk@feddit.uk 32 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's all good and well until you start working in a repo that has both master and main branches for some reason, and it is not clear which is actually the master/main branch.

[–] MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk 40 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Then you're working in an idiotic repo. You could just as well have have a master and an actual_master branch. Similar idiocy.

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[–] Phoenix3875@lemmy.world 33 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The problem with these token activism is that it's hollow in content. The intent might be good, but the action is almost pure virtue signalling.

Slavoj Zizek pointed out in multiple interviews that there's a pervert self-reflectiveness in the self-censorship: privileged people "enjoy" being guilty of their privilege, so it's more about themselves rather than the people they claim to represent. "Sorry, but you were naive and unaware of people being racist when they use these words, so let me stop them and now you are protected (by me) in an inclusive atmosphere."

A related radical freedom situation as an inverse to the above is that when friends get really close, even using racist slurs is treated as a gesture of intimacy, rather than racism. In an ideal world, the context in the public discourse would be so strong that even racist words lose their racist meaning ("oh, so you are joking as well") rather than the opposite (assuming there's ubiquitous "hidden" racism in the use of a word, even when there's clearly none).

Another critique is that it presents itself as a substitute of real solutions. Instead of addressing real problems, it provides a simple "everyday" solution, very much similar to the recycling movement. Of course we need to recycle, but we should be aware that it's not a substitute of radical real actions (e.g. stopping the big oil).

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 31 points 3 weeks ago

Right? I get that langauge evolves and things go in and out of fashion, but this self-censoring for things completely unrelated to the original or derogatory meanings is kind of a pointless exercise to me.

[–] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (16 children)

master over main

That one is the most stupid one too, because master in git doesn't even refer to a master/slave relationship. It refers to a different meaning of the word master, namely "an original from which copies can be made", as in master recording or master key. See 5b in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. And that's how it's used in git: any new branches are derived from master. Main just does not have the same nuance, because it does not imply a relationship between the branches, just that it's somehow more important than the others.

But of course, the real reason it was changed is because for companies like github it's easier to give in to the crazies who demand this than to fight them.

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[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 87 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I remember back in the late 90s being in college. I brought my girlfriend to class one day. She raised her hand after the professer was explaining Master/Slave roles. Keep in mind, I'm white. She's black. She's not enrolle

d in this class AT ALL.

So the professer sees this, and says "Yes, you there, girl I've never seen in 4 months of this class"

And all she said was "Master and Slave drives? That sounds sexy!"

The whole class facepalmed.

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[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 75 points 3 weeks ago (69 children)

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.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 20 points 3 weeks ago

I don't have issues with the original terminology either, and wouldn't really care if it was changed. But if it were changed to Dom/Sun then it would reinforce the meme of the stockings wearing femboy programmer. XD

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[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 60 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Or just use the existing terms. People will find issues with just abuut anything.

[–] osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 50 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Leaving aside the problematic nature of the existing terms, the result was that people actually thought a little more about the relationships the things had and started using better/more precise terminology for the relationships: primary/secondary, active/hot/cold, parent/child, etc.

Net positive all round.

[–] Mellow12@lemmy.world 29 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Woah there. You’re using about 25% more of your brain than the rest of the internet. We’re gonna need you to tone that reasonability down a bit.

I look forward to setting up my next polyamorous network connection. I can wait for the commands nmcli con choke me daddy ens1 thrupple0

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[–] okamiueru@lemmy.world 60 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (19 children)

Until proven otherwise, I assume either ignorance or malicious intentions by those who want to rename these "problematic" terms. It does nothing to improve the actual issues.

The false pretense of having done something, is worse than doing nothing. It's just noise.

To be clear: I don't mind the changing of terms. I'm too old to care about trivial stuff like main vs master. But if the reasoning for such a change is dumb and potentially harmful, you've lost my respect.

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[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 48 points 3 weeks ago

too wordy just make it 😈 and 🥺

[–] bad_alloc@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

"main" is shorter than "master". "sub" is shorter than "slave". Why worry about social issues when you can just type less and move on? :)

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[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 44 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Any time spent on nonsense like this is valuable time lost on real issues.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 26 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

No we need to replace all industry standard terminology and acronyms every few years or so to keep datasheets unintelligible. Shop teachers need to be able to call their students stupid for not knowing that "tension" used to mean "voltage" 90 years ago.

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[–] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 41 points 3 weeks ago (19 children)

It only sounds bad to the fringest of the fringe that's deceivingly loud on twitter. Good luck trying to find even one real person thinking those terms should be changed. This kind of stuff is why people vote for Trump.

[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 36 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There is real, actual, injustice in the world that we need to address. Computer terms are not one of them.

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 40 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Dom drive: "Daddy"

Sub drive: "UwU"

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[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 39 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

no please stop, i'm so tired of googling kinky stuff, seeing a spicy looking result and opening it just to see some computer server stuff pick something else idk maybe capitalist & worker, bonus points for political commentary

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[–] febra@lemmy.world 37 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (15 children)

I'm a developer. I use main/release/dev for new projects, because it just sounds better and is more intuitive to me honestly. "Master" doesn't make much sense. Like what's so "master" about a "master branch"? It's just the main branch everything gets merged into. It doesn't "control" branches. There's no "master/slave" relationship there. So again, "master" was never really intuitive to me.

Old projects don't get relabeled, they stay master, cause relabeling the main branch could cause potential problems. That's my two cents.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 24 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I look at “master” in our repo like you would refer to a master recording or a remaster, or similarly the gold master for when you could say a video game has gone gold.

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[–] IzzyScissor@lemmy.world 35 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] Cap@kbin.melroy.org 32 points 3 weeks ago

We've been using Master/Bater down at the church.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 29 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 29 points 3 weeks ago

With PCBs it’s mother/daughter

[–] 10_0@lemmy.ml 29 points 3 weeks ago

I'm trying to imagine a world where this is a problem, oh, twitter

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 27 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] Teddy@programming.dev 27 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I've seen publisher/subscriber out in the wild.

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[–] Zozano@lemy.lol 27 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] univers3man@lemmy.world 23 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Is there a Lemmy equivalent of /r/brandnewsentence?

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[–] match@pawb.social 22 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)
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[–] clickyello@lemmy.world 22 points 3 weeks ago (20 children)

y'all I understand there are larger issues in the world but please let's not pretend that POC working in tech feel awesome about typing master/slave in the terminal, it's outdated and should be changed.

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[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 20 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I would go for master and puppets

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[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] usrtrv@lemmy.ml 28 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

That doesn't make sense depending on the context. New I2C standard switched to controller/target for example. This conveys that one device is controlling the other devices.

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[–] snooggums@midwest.social 19 points 3 weeks ago

Boss/Minion

[–] collapse_already@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

A post-doc that occasionally taught one of my electrical engineering classes in the mid-90s liked to call master-slave flip-flops professor-graduate student flip-flops. I later learned he was not making a joke.

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