Jul 17, 2020 11:00:00

Apple decides to eliminate 'programming terms that may be considered racist'

As the “

Black Lives Matter (BLM) ” movement protesting against the unfair treatment of black people has risen, “master/slave” and “blacklist/whitelist” used in the programming world in the technology industry Paraphrasing of terms is progressing. On July 16, 2020, Apple also announced that it has updated its application design guidelines for developers, the Apple Style Guide, to ban the use of racist terminology.

Updates to Coding Terminology-News-Apple Developer
https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=1o9zxsxl

Apple to remove, replace non-inclusive language in code base | Appleinsider
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/07/17/apple-to-remove-replace-non-inclusive-language-in-code-base

Apple banishes'blacklist' and'master branch' in push for inclusive language-CNET
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-banishes-blacklist-and-master-branch-in-push-for-inclusive-language/

Before the BLM movement became active in 2020, there were “blacklists” that rejected specific users and terms, “whitelists” that were the opposite, and “master/slave” that indicates the control side/action side of a device or system. It was pointed out that the term was racist. Even so, except for some projects, the replacement of programming terms used for many years did not proceed.

However, in response to the activation of the BLM movement following the death of a black man George Floyd in May 2020, the technology industry is moving forward with the elimination and replacement of racist terms. I will. Google, GitHub, Linux , Twitter , JP Morgan and others are also reported to be translating terms.

The programming terms 'blacklist' and 'master/slave' are being paraphrased as 'racist'-GIGAZINE

Meanwhile, Apple also updated the application design guideline 'Apple Style Guide' for developers on July 16, 2020, from Apple's integrated development environment Xcode , platform API, documents, open source projects, etc. 'Terms that could be considered as racial discrimination' will be eliminated and replaced.

Instead of using the 'blacklist/whitelist' in the 'Apple Style Guide,' Apple says 'deny list/allow list' and 'unapproved list/approved list( such as unapproved list / approved list) ' to use the term and, such as' 'host / client instead of the master / slave (master / slave)' (host / client) ',' main / secondary (main / secondary) ' term We recommend using .

Apple is advancing racist term replacement across the developer ecosystem, Apple said it cannot recommend developer APIs that use words that should be excluded, and encourages racist term replacement. I called for the developers.