4 ms·

The intransigent minority [1] strikes again. Perhaps the tech community should grow a spine and stand up to the minority that demands these sort of changes. T

by tdons 6y ago

The intransigent minority [1] strikes again. Perhaps the tech community should grow a spine and stand up to the minority that demands these sort of changes. That is: if the tech community /really/ doesn't want them, which (to me) is unclear. [1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

giancarlostoro 6y ago
As an actual American minority I'm a little upset that instead of someone trying to do something meaningful about racism they bikeshedded this solution. Git was made by a man from Finland, I find it highly unlikely he had nefarious intentions in naming the default branch 'master' and anybody who disagrees really needs to reevaluate everything we know about Linus. He doesn't care about people's attributes, he cares about code quality above all things, not to mention in the context of the project the word master can only fit under the simple context of a golden master. Context matters. Will I lose any sleep over it? Probably not, because this changes absolutely nothing in the racism landscape. It just confuses some, maybe outrages others. They've made something that was never racist into something racist (at least in their heads). Sidenote: I do wonder if the person who proposed the change wrote it up from their master bedroom.
- dingaling 6y ago
  > Git was made by a man from Finland ... and deliberately named it using a word that's offensive in British English. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Git https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Git If you said 'git' to someone in an English pub you'd be looking for a punch. For USians it's roughly comparable to 'asshole' on the spectrum of offensiveness.
  - tarboreus 6y ago
    Git is a couple of pegs down from asshole. Better analogy in American English would be "jerk," without, perhaps, the implied sexual connotation.
  - giancarlostoro 6y ago
    The fourth definition does not sound so bad ;) I mean, yeah he did that as a punch to himself because he felt naming another project after himself would be bad. Heck some would argue the UX of git command line makes the name fitting.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  As another American minority I welcome changes to our tooling landscape and updating out of date language. No this doesn't do anything, but it significantly reduces the amount of time I have to say master in discussions related to code. Something I personally don't feel comfortable saying. No this isn't going to fix systemic racism, but it is setting the precedent that our standards can and should evolve with culture and people.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    I myself am a minority as well. I'm genuinely worried that all of this talk and social shaming related to "systemic racism" is actually going to create more of the monster it purports to try to defeat. I mean, seriously. How do you think right wing people feel when they see left wing people on TV chanting that we should abolish the police? They clutch their guns even harder, that's what happens. By making an immense deal out of race issues, I think we might be making the problem worse. In the 1990s, people generally had an attitude of "race doesn't matter", and now, it's become the opposite, "race is the only thing that matters". It's splitting us into factions and helping nobody.
    - aaomidi 6y ago
      I mean, I'm also for abolishment of police. Police in basically everywhere of the world was made by the ruling class to keep people in order. This matter is even worse in the US that a LOT of police departments were literally made after the emancipation proclamation (or somewhat before), to capture runaway slaves. This is the history of policing in the US. I think what it generally comes down to is a LOT of Americans, and a lot of people in the world haven't learned the history of their own country. People probably know more about WW2 than they do about the history of abuse in their own country. I unfortunately was one of these people and until I decided to listen to people and start studying the history of America I understood a lot of the things I stood for were based on essentially lies. I do think saying "lets abolish police" without the context of "why", or "wait what about the murderers?" is harmful. I think people on the left generally assumes too much of people, and assumes that they've also spent many hours reading and understanding and discussing history.

by tdons 6y ago

giancarlostoro 6y ago

As an actual American minority I'm a little upset that instead of someone trying to do something meaningful about racism they bikeshedded this solution. Git was made by a man from Finland, I find it highly unlikely he had nefarious intentions in naming the default branch 'master' and anybody who disagrees really needs to reevaluate everything we know about Linus. He doesn't care about people's attributes, he cares about code quality above all things, not to mention in the context of the project the word master can only fit under the simple context of a golden master. Context matters. Will I lose any sleep over it? Probably not, because this changes absolutely nothing in the racism landscape. It just confuses some, maybe outrages others. They've made something that was never racist into something racist (at least in their heads). Sidenote: I do wonder if the person who proposed the change wrote it up from their master bedroom.

dingaling 6y ago
> Git was made by a man from Finland ... and deliberately named it using a word that's offensive in British English. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Git https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Git If you said 'git' to someone in an English pub you'd be looking for a punch. For USians it's roughly comparable to 'asshole' on the spectrum of offensiveness.
- tarboreus 6y ago
  Git is a couple of pegs down from asshole. Better analogy in American English would be "jerk," without, perhaps, the implied sexual connotation.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  The fourth definition does not sound so bad ;) I mean, yeah he did that as a punch to himself because he felt naming another project after himself would be bad. Heck some would argue the UX of git command line makes the name fitting.
aaomidi 6y ago
As another American minority I welcome changes to our tooling landscape and updating out of date language. No this doesn't do anything, but it significantly reduces the amount of time I have to say master in discussions related to code. Something I personally don't feel comfortable saying. No this isn't going to fix systemic racism, but it is setting the precedent that our standards can and should evolve with culture and people.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  I myself am a minority as well. I'm genuinely worried that all of this talk and social shaming related to "systemic racism" is actually going to create more of the monster it purports to try to defeat. I mean, seriously. How do you think right wing people feel when they see left wing people on TV chanting that we should abolish the police? They clutch their guns even harder, that's what happens. By making an immense deal out of race issues, I think we might be making the problem worse. In the 1990s, people generally had an attitude of "race doesn't matter", and now, it's become the opposite, "race is the only thing that matters". It's splitting us into factions and helping nobody.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    I mean, I'm also for abolishment of police. Police in basically everywhere of the world was made by the ruling class to keep people in order. This matter is even worse in the US that a LOT of police departments were literally made after the emancipation proclamation (or somewhat before), to capture runaway slaves. This is the history of policing in the US. I think what it generally comes down to is a LOT of Americans, and a lot of people in the world haven't learned the history of their own country. People probably know more about WW2 than they do about the history of abuse in their own country. I unfortunately was one of these people and until I decided to listen to people and start studying the history of America I understood a lot of the things I stood for were based on essentially lies. I do think saying "lets abolish police" without the context of "why", or "wait what about the murderers?" is harmful. I think people on the left generally assumes too much of people, and assumes that they've also spent many hours reading and understanding and discussing history.