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Brian Marick's avatar

Re: "master". In IT work, there's a tradition of using "master" and "slave" when one server (etc.) in some sense takes instruction from another. A database, for example, might run on several computers, each of which has a copy of the data. The master is the computer that receives all the changes ("writes"), which it then distributes to the slaves. All requests for data go to the slaves. In most cases, this improves responsiveness.

Sometimes it's the case where if a master fails, one of the slaves becomes the new master.

As that example shows, it's not the greatest analogy. The terminology is falling out of favor. For example, the *very* widely used Postgres database says "Servers that can modify data are called read/write, master or primary servers. Servers that track changes in the primary are called standby or secondary servers." As you can see, "slave" (unsurprisingly) is more likely to be dumped than "master", but the latter is also often changed, typically to some controversy.

For example, github.com is widely used to manage multiple versions of programs. One version used to be the "master" version. You'd copy a new version from the master, change it, and then likely "merge the changes back" into master. The analogy, I'm sure, was to "master document" or "master tape". Nevertheless the default name got changed to "main" a few years ago, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I very much suspect the Stanford IT department was following that trend.

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Michael Roberts's avatar

The reference to "code" is almost certainly just a warning to people that comments in code have a nasty way of coming to light years later, and maybe you want to look like a human being when they do. Brogrammers can be pretty foul in comments sometimes. I wonder if there was an actual incident behind this.

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