
Replace "master/slave" terminology with "primary/replica" - hashberry
https://www.drupal.org/node/2275877
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hcho
Negative connotations aside, this is still a good idea. Master/slave
terminology trips up at least some beginners. Masters laze all day and slaves
do all the work. Not really a good analogy.

~~~
todd3834
I'm not sure slaves are always replicas so, although primary/replica might
work in some instances, I do not think this naming convention covers all of
the use cases.

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fleitz
Yeah in databases primary/replica is probably a much better description of
what's actually going on.

Personally, my political naming pet peeve is with *Manager classes, they're
generally a sign of poor naming / architecture. Maybe the employee class
doesn't need the EmployeeManager for every operation, just sayin...

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hashberry
Words can have multiple definitions. Webster dictionary defines slave as "a
device (as the printer of a computer) that is directly responsive to another."
Machines aren't people.

No one implements "master/slave" database replication and then thinks human
slavery is socially acceptable.

~~~
jldugger
At the same time, "primary/replica" is just as well easily understood, and the
change is easy to make. If making the change makes it marginally easier for
minority participation, and you want your user base to grow, why not make the
change?

~~~
claudius
Except that primary/replica is of course not a drop-in replacement for
master/slave (just think of the two devices per IDE bus). Furthermore, it is
trivial to find offence in the word “primary” as well, especially in a context
where master/slave was used previously, just think of “primus inter pares”.

~~~
Symmetry
It might not be a drop in replacement in all circumstances, but it is in the
case under discussion. I don't think anyone in this discussion would support
using primary/replicant for IDE busses, and bringing them up here is really
just a straw man.

You can't avoid ever offending someone, but in this case you can reduce the
amount of offence caused by a small but significant amount at basically no
cost.

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dewey
Previous discussion [0] where the same thing happened to django with this pull
request [1].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646)

[1]
[https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692](https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692)

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DanBC
I asked a (really poorly worded[1]) at English usage stack exchange. Luckily
someone understood what I wanted to ask and provided a useful example.

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/178799/did-
slave-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/178799/did-slave-ever-
apply-to-anything-other-than-people)

The OED has an example of "slave" being used for mechanical devices in 1904.
So while this usage is much more modern than the 9th century origin of the
word it's not something that has been invented by computing.

[1] I should have asked something like "When did 'slave' evolve to include
devices?"

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hoggle
If we go down that route I would prefer primary/secondary - it's likely more
accurate and intuitive than "replica" in my opinion.

Hilarious comment on the drupal issue - why not to use replica:

"In the name of all replicants, I protest the use of the word 'replica' in
such a demeaning way. You wouldn't believe what we've suffered already...
I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off
the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the
Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like tears...
in... rain."

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dominotw
What about Jenkins ? It uses the word slave pretty extensively. I found about
800 usage in jenkins src code alone, not counting plugins.

~~~
hashberry
As does MySQL.
[http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication.html](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication.html)

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ryandvm
How about we just abolish slavery instead? Then we wouldn't have to worry
about offending anyone.

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droope
Man there are some serious politics in coding lately

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DanBC
#8 is, indeed, beautifully put.

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krisdol
150 years after the civil war, slavery was finally eradicated by an historic
commit to the drupal repository. Thank you, concerned programmers, for using
your combined power to enact real, positive change in this world. I can't
imagine how many people who lived in the oppressive shadow of the now-trounced
status quo will rejoice when they learn of this news.

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sscalia
Here comes the hurricane...

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jonny_eh
Just imagine the point that machines become sentient and hyper intelligent. Do
you think they'll appreciate being called slaves? This debate could determine
the fate of humanity!

