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GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
- Y-Bopinator 6y agoThis is perfect because so many programmers are unnecessarily triggered and reminded of the time they were slaves and had a “master”.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoReally? Git doesn't have any actual references to slavery. Even if it did, is everyone now disallowed from using such terminology in a benign manner? I'm not sure calling it "main" makes sense, in any case; anyone who uses git flow knows it's not the "main" branch where most of the day-to-day development takes place. As the article points out, this is a reference to "master" as in a master copy, which is why there's no corresponding reference to slave. If you download the official git book from the website and control-F for "slave", do you know what you'll find? Zero results!
- musingsole 6y ago"root" might be more appropriate than either "main" or "master".
- mmm_grayons 6y agoI suppose that makes more sense than main, but it still begs the question: given that there is no actual slave reference to remove, and discounting the questionable necessity of removing such a reference were one to exist, what's the problem here?
- musingsole 6y agoDo you work with people who are experts in things you are not? When one of them raises a concern from the field they're an expert in, you generally must take it as a given that the issue is real and must be addressed, as the expert raised it and wouldn't have otherwise. Your role might be to point out how the presented fixes to the issue might/will cause issues in your field of expertise, but it'd be pretty unprofessional to question the validity of the other expert's designated problem.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoSorry, who exactly is the expert here that shouldn't be questioned? While I generally respect experts' opinions, I also find it reasonable to question them when they don't pass the smell test.
- musingsole 6y agoI can respect your smell test if you can respect that it's highly susceptible to Dunning-Kruger and the various mishaps of not knowing what you don't know.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoYou still didn't tell me who these "experts" are, though it seemed you were referencing several in a prior comment, so I'm unsure how to address that point. I'd of course respect the opinion of an expert, and I'd recognize that I have a very good chance of being wrong, but that makes it even more important to question things. If I'm right, we come to a better conclusion; if I'm wrong, I learn something.
- musingsole 6y agoI didn't answer your question because it's rather obvious. Thanks for the downvote though!
- mmm_grayons 6y agoHN doesn't permit users to downvote replies to their comments, so you can be sure that wasn't me. Maybe it's obvious to you, but I'm not sure how one qualifies as an expert in the necessity (or not) of removing the word "master" from github branches. Would you please elaborate?
- IshKebab 6y agoThat would be very confusing considering git repos are DAGs, and `master` is normally exactly the opposite of the root node. Look up `git rebase --root`.
- mikelward 6y ago"trunk" and "mainline" are the two terms I'm more familiar with.
- danharaj 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23518123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23518123 Previous discussion. This one won't be any different.
- merricksb 6y agoAlso: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093 (138 points/224 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23519813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23519813 (44 points/84 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23522859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23522859 (15 points/5 comments)
- HenryKissinger 6y ago"I'm looking forward to completing your training. In time you will call me master."
- antishatter 6y agoGoofy idea, I work with black developers who told me this had never even crossed their mind.
- KayL 6y agoKick it out is easy. Get it back it hard.
- antishatter 6y agoI don't follow, would you mind elaborating?
- wreck 6y agoWhen building my first computer (with help) in the 90s, setting up hard drives in master or slave was the first time I learned the definition of slave. I was 6-7 years old and I'm not American
- EForEndeavour 6y agoWould you agree from personal experience that calling them something like "primary" and "secondary" or "1" and "2" would be less confusing to 6-7 year olds?
- antieverything 6y agoI can already imagine the head of some white supremacist programmer or sysadmin exploding when they are forced to rename branches because of this. These kinds of actions are meant to send a loud and clear message that racists cant hide anywhere. It’s not that gits master branch is reated to racism, its about reaching the minds of the little brained supremacists. I can even see some hackernews “contrarians” which are just closed racists complaining about the issue, and their up and coming slave master defender Paul Graham complaining about it on twitter: yOu cAnT eRaSE HiSToRY and give supremacists free speech he will say, to look like an intelectual.
- BigJ1211 6y agoThe team I work in is rather diverse, (not just black/white). This never crosses anyone's mind here. It also reeks far more of virtue signalling than it does of actually taking action against racism or racial bias. This screams loudly "Look at all we're doing to stop 'racism'" without actually addressing the real harmful racist issues that exist. (Slavery wasn't just against black people, though it's the most recent or well known form of slavery. It sadly also still exists) Like people of minorities being paid less or people of minorities havin to go to significantly more interviews. This isn't limited to black people, this is for anyone who has a non-white sounding name. (at least in Western civilisation). I don't really care if they do change it personally, but I'd much prefer actual action against racial bias.
- athenot 6y agoWhen I first learned about MySQL replication in 2000, the terminology of Master/Slave seemed really odd and a bit shocking. 20 years later the terminology is still peculiar to me. Even though it's an accurate representation of what slavery is, it is a poignant reminder of a human condition that has sadly not disappeared. The slave database, as a read-only data store, has no agency and can only follow the master database. Yet it's the workhorse for all heavy queries, especially those part of reporting for various execs. It has no value except as a means to reduce load of the master and to save it's rear end in case of corruption... yes there are many parallels. But still, after 2 decades, I'm not sure that this terminology is essential to the world of relational databases. "Leader/Follower" or "Primary/Replica" could convey the same data concepts without resorting to a comparison with slavery. Perhaps a wording update might be in order here.
- antieverything 6y agoI bet 10 whole beers that you will get downvoted by the hn closet racist mob. Apparently their fuhrer PG thinks statues for slave owners are a good thing - just follow his twitter and see how much he is leaning towards the danger zone. Calls himself a contrarian, and thinks racist ideas are freedom of speech and the world had too much liberalism. Puke.
- kerkeslager 6y agoPeople of color of HN: is this something you care about, or is this just white people virtue signalling? I'm not trying to start a debate here, I'm genuinely asking because I don't know the answer.
- Shihan 6y agoI can tell, it never crossed my mind. Never saw anything related to slavery/race in this and still don't see anything now. In German the word Meister is also used, for example "Meisterberuf", "Lehrmeister", "Bäckermeister", "Weltmeister" - it has nothing to do with slavery, in most of the cases it just means a person who has mastered something. You have this to, e.g. "Master of Arts". So now what, should this also be renamed? "Skillful Person of Arts" maybe? This word bastardization reminds me really of 1984 and I fear it dumbs us all down.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoI think we should actually remove the word slave from the english language to prevent all the needless suffering that it creates /s
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoBut in all seriousness, if seeing it on github is damaging to the mental health of descendants of slavery in america, why do we allow the word to exist at all and where is it acceptable to use? Should words like this be put in something akin to a biohazard lab?