[R] The "--slave" option

[Jeff Newmiller]

I think there is no confusion except in the minds of those with nothing better to do. I agree with Antirez, quoted in [1], which nevertheless indicates that perspective lost the debate.

Any accurate alternative notation will have similar connotations because in fact the "slave" side of that relationship is completely subordinate to the "master" side... there is no escaping that fact. It requires a very different and more complicated architecture to achieve a "peer" relationship, which often is not worth the effort or even appropriate.

So while Dr Lang may be mollified by a change in notation, someone else  is going to find the new words offensive and make the same PC argument since the implications of the architecture have not changed. In fact there should never have been a parallel drawn between the morality of human slavery and computing architectures to begin with.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslave-terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language

On September 18, 2019 11:57:32 AM PDT, "Patrick (Malone Quantitative)" <malone using malonequantitative.com> wrote:
>For what it's worth, this is an ongoing conversation in computer
>science and engineering. And has been so for decades.
>
>Not R, but related to this it's only in the past few months that a
>fork of the photo-manipulation software GIMP (slur for handicapped)
>renames it (GLIMPSE).
>
>Note, I am not saying this isn't a battle worth fighting.
>
>On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:52 PM Benjamin Lang <benjamin.lang using crg.eu>
>wrote:
>>
>> Dear R project,
>>
>> I have a very simple question:
>>
>> How, in late 2019, is there an option called "--slave" to "make R run
>as
>> quietly as possible"?
>>
>> Let me reiterate that it is 2019, i.e. "The Future", rather than 1970
>when
>> R was presumably developed, based on its atrocious syntax,
>documentation
>> and usability (I think I only need to say "NaN", "NULL", and "NA").
>>
>> This is a disgrace and it should have been addressed one or two
>decades
>> ago. Why not just "--quiet"?
>>
>> Please do not mention "backwards compatibility". For the historically
>> inclined, it does not make much of a difference whether the term
>evokes the
>> Roman, Greek, American or modern kind of slavery for you: it is as
>> disgusting as it gets.
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Ben
>>
>> --
>> Benjamin Lang, PhD
>> http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6358-8380
>>
>> Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (MSCA-IF)
>> Gene Function and Evolution (Dr. Gian Tartaglia)
>> Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, Spain
>>
>>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.