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'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

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EEVblog:

--- Quote from: julianhigginson on June 21, 2020, 11:46:03 pm ---I'm still unsure of how much of a push there is from actual people of colour for this change, and therefore how much a of a need for it there is - but since it's so easy to do, and has some precedent in the community now
--- End quote ---

It's not "easy to do". There are generations of course material, datasheets, app notes, and tutorials etc, not to mention the countless teachers and engineers who don't give a rats arse about modern identity politics. Adafruit and a few others wouldn't even represent a fraction of a percent of the material and sentiment out there.
And not teaching the accepted industry standard terms is disadvantageous to any students.

james_s:

--- Quote from: Simon on June 21, 2020, 12:47:10 pm ---Yes confusion is a problem, and yes once half the language has been banned everything will just be called "thing", then we will all know exactly what we are talking about.

--- End quote ---

julianhigginson:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on June 22, 2020, 12:06:23 am ---It's not "easy to do". There are generations of course material, datasheets, app notes, and tutorials etc, not to mention the countless teachers and engineers who don't give a rats arse about modern identity politics. Adafruit and a few others wouldn't even represent a fraction of a percent of the material and sentiment out there.
And not teaching the accepted industry standard terms is disadvantageous to any students.

--- End quote ---

it *is* easy to do going forward.

I'm not sure how many people are talking about going back and pulping every physical or digital copy of every technical book or manual that uses the old terms... Or arresting people who use the old terms... that would be ridiculous, but I've only see that slipperly sloped, not pushed by anyone who is in favour or even ambivalent about it.

If I write a document talking about SPI controller and peripheral, and someone doesn't understand what I'm talking about then I've got very grave concerns for what happens when they come across an SPI device that has weird timing requirements or unusual data frame lengths and enable pin activity requirements that don't match both ends of the connection... letalone understanding the 4 basic clock/data options that are used everywhere.

And the good news is, once the new terms get decided on (people will come to a consensus about what they all want to use) it'll become pretty easy to tell what most people are doing, whether they describe it in old words or new words.

It's language. It's always changing. It changes for plenty of reasons. Getting upset about *one* instance of words changing for the specific purpose of relieving some perceived level of suffering in some group of people seems (even if it seems like "tokenism" or 'white saviourship virtue signalling" does that even matter that much?) seems, well, a little bit off.  because no matter how ridiculous it might be, it's really not going to cause anyone reading this any measurable harm.

james_s:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on June 22, 2020, 12:06:23 am ---It's not "easy to do". There are generations of course material, datasheets, app notes, and tutorials etc, not to mention the countless teachers and engineers who don't give a rats arse about modern identity politics. Adafruit and a few others wouldn't even represent a fraction of a percent of the material and sentiment out there.
And not teaching the accepted industry standard terms is disadvantageous to any students.

--- End quote ---

Also it adds up. There's this little change and that little change and some other little change, it's like saying "well this only costs $5 a month!" Ok yeah, $5 here, $10 there, it adds up and pretty soon it's not such a trivial amount of money. If it takes me cumulatively a couple of hours to adjust to a new set of words for something which I don't think is unreasonable when you consider dealing with all these "microtranslations" each time I encounter the old term that's a couple of hours out of my finite life that I could have spent learning something I didn't already know. And why? Because someone found the old words offensive? What if I find the new words offensive? I do in fact find change that is just for the sake of change offensive. Are my feelings less important than those of someone else?

julianhigginson:

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope

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