3 ms·
If the problem is descriptiveness and ease of understanding, the same can be said about the words "white" or "black" when referring to people. Neither of them s
by Mordisquitos 6y ago
If the problem is descriptiveness and ease of understanding, the same can be said about the words "white" or "black" when referring to people. Neither of them say what they mean.
In fact, I would argue that disagreements and ambiguities as to what makes a person "white" or "black" are astronomically more frequent than difficulties in understanding what is meant by the words "whitelist" or "blacklist".
- foobiter 6y agoallowlist and blocklist are clearer regardless
- Mordisquitos 6y agoAre they? Are the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" used only in the context of "allowing" and "blocking"? Who or what is the subject that is implied to be "allowing" and "blocking" the elements of each list? Is the process involved in "allowing" and/or "blocking" passive or active? "Whitelist" and "blacklist" are abstract terms which are useful because they have general and non-specific meanings which can be adapted to many contexts. Artificially prescribed alternatives, introduced only to satisfy the current American cultural Zeitgeist, are not.
- fanf2 6y agoIf you aren't using the list for allowing or blocking, then give it a name that describes what you are using it for. It dismays me to see programmers arguing loudly and stubbornly for bad terminology, when a key skill for designing a good API is to choose good names.
- Mordisquitos 6y agoIf only so much other "bad terminology" in IT that does not accurately reflect what it means, such as POST, PUT, cookie, bug, shell, etc. were also names of discriminated social groups in America... maybe then we could get people arguing loudly and stubbornly to replace them. One can only dream.
- slver 6y agoI propose we rename GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH to: SAFE, NOTSAFE, NOTSAFE, NOTSAFE, NOTSAFE.
- foobiter 6y agoyou didn’t even give a single counter example
- dragonwriter 6y ago> the same can be said about the words "white" or "black" when referring to people. Neither of them say what they mean. Neither should be used to refer to people. “White” and “Black”, capitalized as proper nouns and proper adjectives are in English, to refer to particular identity groups and association with those identity groups are, OTOH, a different story.