[McP]

Computing is full of metaphors like "kill".

My 7 year old niece looked over my shoulder as I was writing this and said "kill!?" with a look of disgust! Disgust! I suspect that this reaction is typical of many females getting started in computing. Could it be a small part of why there are so few women in computing?

My niece gets very excited when she sees me use commands she knows like ls, cd, cat (especially cat!). The fact that she could grow up to become a DBA and won't have to talk about "dumb slaves" is something I celebrate. It's not nearly as important as <insert whataboutism here> but it's progress.

(If you or someone you know has been victimised because they're comfortable with existing terminology then I'm sorry for that, really. If you feel that changing terminology is a waste of time that is OK. If you don't want to rename your branches then no-one should give you a hard time about it.)