In light of our disastrous word use the other day, I thought this article, though about Python, was interesting:

‘Master/Slave’ Terminology Was Removed from Python Programming Language

If you’re not immersed in the world of software or electronics engineering, you might find yourself surprised at how often the terms “master” and “slave” are thrown around in documentation. When discussing technology, these terms are used to refer to components that have total control over other components or are controlled by a component, respectively. Given that slavery was institutionalized in the United States for hundreds of years, however, the casual use of these terms by techies has understandably become a contentious issue in recent years.

The issue escalated last week when a programmer issued a change request that advocated for avoiding this terminology in Python, which is consistently ranked as one of the top three programming languages in the world.

“For diversity reasons, it would be nice to try to avoid ‘master’ and ‘slave’ terminology, which can be associated with slavery,” Victor Stinner, a developer with the open source software company Red Hat, wrote. Stinner cited multiple private complaints in the thread as the reason for requesting the change.

Unsurprisingly, the change request resulted in a heated debate among Python developers about the necessity for the change. Many developers agreeing that the word “slave” ought to be removed, but that “master” wasn’t an offensive term. Others argued that the terminology accurately describes the relationship between electronic components and should be taken in context. One developer even invoked BDSM culture, saying “‘master/slave’ can have *positive* connotations. You want to support diversity, then why are you discriminating against that subculture?”

In the end, most of Stinner’s suggested terminology changes were adopted. Thus, “slaves” was changed to “workers” or “helpers” and “master process” to “parent process.”

The rest of the article talks about the removal of the terminology from other languages.