7 ms·

Reminds me of when GitHub stopped using "master" for the default branch because it was somehow offensive.

by olalonde 5y ago

knorker 5y ago
Reminds me of when GitHub kicked out a paying customer for using the word "retard" as a verb in the mathematical sense.
- vincnetas 5y ago
  had to look that up Retarded differential equations (RDEs) are differential equations having retarded arguments. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377042700004763 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037704270...
  - MikeDelta 5y ago
    And quantum physics has degenerate energy levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels
- trollied 5y ago
  Large planes tell pilots vocally to “retard” when landing…
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Which can be amusing if you don't know what's going on, it suddenly sounds like the autopilot is pissed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI And for those who would like to change this, any change to a pilot's routine has a chance of being the thing that pushes an incident over the edge into a crash. Would it be worth it?
    - knorker 5y ago
      I would predict that the same people who say we should defund the police (the ones that mean it literally), and say that "being on time", "work before play", and "be polite" is part of the white oppressive culture[1], and needs to be dismantled, would also argue that flying, and the methodology of the NTSB (and foreign equivalents) that has reduced airline accidents of the decades, is also part of the structural racism of white dominant culture. I'm not saying this is a large set of people. But it looks like some of them have power at github. I guess if you're doing software for the airline industry you cannot use github. Well, honestly I wouldn't use github for anything if money depended on it, because of their record of "firing" customers who don't toe the line on their exact politics. [1] I'm quoting training material that even passed HR review in corporate education DEI here. It's not hyperbole.
madamelic 5y ago
My opinion: `main` is better. It's shorter, it's more descriptive, and costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive. It's pretty much an all around win.
- subjectsigma 5y ago
  Except that it broke all my fucking scripts that use git
- V-2 5y ago
  Your point makes sense, but it wasn't the official explanation.
- tryptophan 5y ago
  Its worse because suddenly 20 years worth of tutorials are slightly 'wrong' and will confuse new users even more for no reason. "Why does my git say main and not master? Did I break it?" "Why cant I push to master like the 100x tutorials show? I get errors!"
  - valeness 5y ago
    Does this mean we should never make progress or change anything? Also if your tutorials are using a base repository to work from, then you can still have the branch "master" it's just not default. So your existing repos should still work. And if you changed your repo then you should be responsible for updating your documentation to reflect that. It's just good practice.
    - tiborsaas 5y ago
      What about giving master a new meaning? Actively banning it conservers its original meaning. Probably nobody today thinks about woman sitting in a room doing calculations when we speak about computers.
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      I fail to see how changing the names from "master" and "slave" makes any "progress" at all. What is the most concise way to express the idea that one entity is totally subordinate to another, and must comply with every request the other sends? I struggle to come up with any two terms that make this more clear than "master" and "slave". Just because we've abolished chattel slavery, doesn't mean we should avoid the very words themselves when they are appropriate. Destruction of meaning is far worse than some abstract offense that doesn't seem reasonable to take on behalf of a computer process.
burnished 5y ago
Main is better. Master/slave has uncomfortable connotations. This one isn't a big deal.
- BadCookie 5y ago
  Slavery was horrible and should not be forgotten. Erasing all related words so that we can all comfortably forget it ever happened seems … wrong? That’s another way of looking at it, anyway.
  - burnished 5y ago
    How is that erasure? It's ok to change your word choice, and I didn't think slavery being an uncomfortable topic was uncommon until this thread.
- veeti 5y ago
  Where is the slave in git?
  - burnished 5y ago
    There isn't, but if you are going to learn about computers then you're going to hear a lot about master/slave relationships. If you don't get exposed to that kind of jargon then it wouldn't surprise me if you don't have that connotation as strongly and instead only thought of master as in "mastery" or the degree after a bachelors.
  - bloak 5y ago
    There is no "slave" in Git, but the term "master", like many things in Git, is taken from BitKeeper, which did have a "slave". Or so I've read, for example here: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/474419/does-the-term-master-in-git-the-vc-system-refer-to-slavery https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/474419/does-the-...
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I agree that "main" is better, purely because it's a more intuitive word for that role. As far as "uncomfortable connotations", would you agree that that's a subjective claim? I don't like that forced slavery is a thing, but I'm capable of handling context-specific word meanings, and of not getting emotional due to alternative meanings.
dekhn 5y ago
When I built a distributed system, I wanted to avoid the terms "master and slave" for the "coordinator and worker", so instead I chose something I thought was relatively less controversial- daimyo, honcho, and peasant. Only later did I realize I had merely recapitulated the power structure of feudal japan.
- Tao331 5y ago
  I prefer sovereign and vassal. No one has called me out on it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
darkwater 5y ago
And the world moved on, nothing exploded and new generations will be used to 'main'.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Actually quite a lot of things exploded. You just don't care about the people who had to pick up the pieces. Moreover, lots of git repos still use master so "new generations" will just have to do deal with pointless divergence and breakage for nothing. The change wasn't progress. It wasn't useful. It didn't stop anyone being offended. It was and still is pure make-work for absolutely no purpose beyond the demonstration of power over irrelevant things.
troupe 5y ago
I'm waiting for companies to demote anyone who had a promotion based on having a master's degree.

Reminds me of when GitHub stopped using "master" for the default branch because it was somehow offensive.

knorker 5y ago

Reminds me of when GitHub kicked out a paying customer for using the word "retard" as a verb in the mathematical sense.

vincnetas 5y ago
had to look that up Retarded differential equations (RDEs) are differential equations having retarded arguments. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377042700004763 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037704270...
- MikeDelta 5y ago
  And quantum physics has degenerate energy levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels
trollied 5y ago
Large planes tell pilots vocally to “retard” when landing…
- bombcar 5y ago
  Which can be amusing if you don't know what's going on, it suddenly sounds like the autopilot is pissed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI And for those who would like to change this, any change to a pilot's routine has a chance of being the thing that pushes an incident over the edge into a crash. Would it be worth it?
  - knorker 5y ago
    I would predict that the same people who say we should defund the police (the ones that mean it literally), and say that "being on time", "work before play", and "be polite" is part of the white oppressive culture[1], and needs to be dismantled, would also argue that flying, and the methodology of the NTSB (and foreign equivalents) that has reduced airline accidents of the decades, is also part of the structural racism of white dominant culture. I'm not saying this is a large set of people. But it looks like some of them have power at github. I guess if you're doing software for the airline industry you cannot use github. Well, honestly I wouldn't use github for anything if money depended on it, because of their record of "firing" customers who don't toe the line on their exact politics. [1] I'm quoting training material that even passed HR review in corporate education DEI here. It's not hyperbole.

madamelic 5y ago

My opinion: `main` is better. It's shorter, it's more descriptive, and costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive. It's pretty much an all around win.

subjectsigma 5y ago
Except that it broke all my fucking scripts that use git
V-2 5y ago
Your point makes sense, but it wasn't the official explanation.
tryptophan 5y ago
Its worse because suddenly 20 years worth of tutorials are slightly 'wrong' and will confuse new users even more for no reason. "Why does my git say main and not master? Did I break it?" "Why cant I push to master like the 100x tutorials show? I get errors!"
- valeness 5y ago
  Does this mean we should never make progress or change anything? Also if your tutorials are using a base repository to work from, then you can still have the branch "master" it's just not default. So your existing repos should still work. And if you changed your repo then you should be responsible for updating your documentation to reflect that. It's just good practice.
  - tiborsaas 5y ago
    What about giving master a new meaning? Actively banning it conservers its original meaning. Probably nobody today thinks about woman sitting in a room doing calculations when we speak about computers.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    I fail to see how changing the names from "master" and "slave" makes any "progress" at all. What is the most concise way to express the idea that one entity is totally subordinate to another, and must comply with every request the other sends? I struggle to come up with any two terms that make this more clear than "master" and "slave". Just because we've abolished chattel slavery, doesn't mean we should avoid the very words themselves when they are appropriate. Destruction of meaning is far worse than some abstract offense that doesn't seem reasonable to take on behalf of a computer process.

burnished 5y ago

Main is better. Master/slave has uncomfortable connotations. This one isn't a big deal.

BadCookie 5y ago
Slavery was horrible and should not be forgotten. Erasing all related words so that we can all comfortably forget it ever happened seems … wrong? That’s another way of looking at it, anyway.
- burnished 5y ago
  How is that erasure? It's ok to change your word choice, and I didn't think slavery being an uncomfortable topic was uncommon until this thread.
veeti 5y ago
Where is the slave in git?
- burnished 5y ago
  There isn't, but if you are going to learn about computers then you're going to hear a lot about master/slave relationships. If you don't get exposed to that kind of jargon then it wouldn't surprise me if you don't have that connotation as strongly and instead only thought of master as in "mastery" or the degree after a bachelors.
- bloak 5y ago
  There is no "slave" in Git, but the term "master", like many things in Git, is taken from BitKeeper, which did have a "slave". Or so I've read, for example here: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/474419/does-the-term-master-in-git-the-vc-system-refer-to-slavery https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/474419/does-the-...
CoastalCoder 5y ago
I agree that "main" is better, purely because it's a more intuitive word for that role. As far as "uncomfortable connotations", would you agree that that's a subjective claim? I don't like that forced slavery is a thing, but I'm capable of handling context-specific word meanings, and of not getting emotional due to alternative meanings.

dekhn 5y ago

When I built a distributed system, I wanted to avoid the terms "master and slave" for the "coordinator and worker", so instead I chose something I thought was relatively less controversial- daimyo, honcho, and peasant. Only later did I realize I had merely recapitulated the power structure of feudal japan.

Tao331 5y ago
I prefer sovereign and vassal. No one has called me out on it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

darkwater 5y ago

And the world moved on, nothing exploded and new generations will be used to 'main'.

native_samples 5y ago
Actually quite a lot of things exploded. You just don't care about the people who had to pick up the pieces. Moreover, lots of git repos still use master so "new generations" will just have to do deal with pointless divergence and breakage for nothing. The change wasn't progress. It wasn't useful. It didn't stop anyone being offended. It was and still is pure make-work for absolutely no purpose beyond the demonstration of power over irrelevant things.

troupe 5y ago

I'm waiting for companies to demote anyone who had a promotion based on having a master's degree.