Twitter and JPMorgan are removing 'master,' 'slave' and 'blacklist' from their code

[Budi]

Twitter and JPMorgan are removing 'master,' 'slave' and 'blacklist' from their code
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/03/tech/twitter-jpmorgan-slave-master-coding/index.html

The language of computing is changing in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Twitter is dropping the terms "master," "slave" and "blacklist" from its code after two engineers lobbied for the use of more inclusive programming language. America's biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase (JPM), is taking similar steps.

"Words matter," Michael Montano, the head of Twitter's engineering team, said in a tweet on Thursday. "We are committed to adopting inclusive language in our code, configuration, documentation and beyond."


SNIP
At Twitter (TWTR), "master" and "slave" will become "leader" and "follower" or "primary" and "replica," while "blacklist" will become "denylist."

"Master" and "slave" refer to one process in the code that controls another, while "blacklist" describes a list of items that are automatically blocked, such as forbidden IP addresses.

Black Lives Matter movement, which is forcing companies to reckon with discrimination and the treatment of Black employees following Floyd's death.

JPMorgan Chase will also remove "master," "slave," and "blacklist" from its internal materials and code. The news was first reported by Reuters and the BBC.

The effort at Twitter was spearheaded by engineers Regynald Augustin and Kevin Oliver.

SNIP
The list of words that will start to be swapped out — which Twitter said is not exhaustive — also includes "grandfathered," which will become "legacy status," and "dummy value," which will become "placeholder value" or "sample value."

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Blacklist must change since it is assigning a negative, but master & slave are precisely the relatio

The reason human slavery is abhorrent is because it is dehumanizing in the extreme. It uses a human as a machine. That is exactly the relationship between the pieces of code. It is not a monument. To stop using it is actually to white-wash slavery, as if to say slavery is nothing like using something or somebody as a machine.

Blacklist is a different issue entirely. To use it is to assign a negative (blocked) with a colour that is arbitrary but freighted with history.

Using "blacklist" is like calling an undesirable thing "gay".