6 ms·
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
by 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 agoExcept that it broke all my fucking scripts that use git
- V-2 5y agoYour point makes sense, but it wasn't the official explanation.
- tryptophan 5y agoIts 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 agoDoes 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 agoWhat 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 agoI 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.
- shadowgovt 5y agoThis is tech. 20 years of tutorials are always becoming slightly wrong. Don't tell me you're still using bare pointers, `new` and `delete` in your C++ classes instead of using smart_ptr fields, or explicitly declaring local variable types instead of using `auto`...
- rurp 5y agoThey were responding to the claim that the master -> main change has "no cost", which is clearly untrue.
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt's an amortized zero cost because training material is continuously out of date and churning anyway. Amortized in the sense that the cost would be paid one way or the other, because people would still be updating their documentation.
- Shaanie 5y agoYou can make the same argument about breaking changes. Code is constantly changing and needs to be updated, so breaking backwards compatibility is zero-cost? In reality each change that requires updates to documentation (or code) is of course not actually zero cost.
- shadowgovt 5y agoNot only can you, we often do in the circles I've run in. Adapt or die is the motto out here.
- google234123 5y ago> Adapt or die is the motto out here This is pretty much the view of the left now :p
- ulwutzor 5y ago
- akomtu 5y agoThis is when Ministry of Truth comes into play. The main character's job in 1984 was literally this: rewriting history when it came into conflict with the updated "truth". Orwell didn't foresee that in a world of computers, such updates are trivially made: no need to reprint newspapers and books, since all of them are virtual.
- saalweachter 5y agoMaster character.
- TrevorJ 5y agoChesterton's Offence: Before we change a word, we should first understand why it was there in the first place. :P
- Pxtl 5y agoRefactor mercilessly.
- packetlost 5y agoExcept for the decades of documentation, blog posts, etc. that will now cause confusing to newcomers.
- skrbjc 5y agoBut main also might be offensive because it's implying one thing is more important than another and some marginalized people who have not been the main group of people may not feel great about that. Really we should use one and two. But we should also be careful and should convene a working group with broad representation to come up with a more inclusive term for this. See how this works? It is also definitely not without cost. It is not free to change all of your documentation and you will inevitably have to be exposed to it anyway because not everyone will have changed it, so it's ultimately not doing anything anyway.
- dogleash 5y ago>costs nothing The communication cost of the change is not free. Do you think the internal wiki and new-hire git training materials all updated themselves? It wasn't a large process change. Most of our git users are competent git users. But I billed hours dealing with it. I still have people here who haven't touched a repository that uses "main" instead of "master". They have better things to do with their lives than lurk social media focused on programming. They don't know yet. Eventually they'll pull something with "main" instead of "master". Can I get your phone number so you can be the one to explain to them?
- simion314 5y agoI had a script that broke because someone changed master into main, put in an equation the 100 people that got satisfaction from this change and the tousands of people getting frustrated because of it.
- ungruntled 5y agoSomeone somewhere will be concerned by the literal words you speak, or the way you say it, or what you actually meant, intended or unintended. They will do it with good intentions or not, and no meaningful discussion will occur because it would be shorter, cost nothing, and offend no-one if you just let them win.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThe mental model of how you use a certain branch could indeed be best expressed by the word "main", so no one can say the word isn't the best one for you to use. But a master copy or version of something like a master recording or gold master for pressing records is different from merely "main". Applied to software they are similar but not identical concepts, and neither is in any way wrong or harmful to anyone. It's a small enough issue that it's not worth fighting very hard over, but, the rationale for the change, and especially for anyone trying to tell anyone else they have to do that change, is still invalid and the word master actually applies better if that's how you're using that branch. It has nothing to do with slave bosses.
- temp8964 5y agoMain is offensive because it sounds like man and spells like man. Here you go…
- umvi 5y agoI don't mind "main" for the main branch but for existing projects... > costs nothing to remove something someone might offensive It might break scripts, aliases, and any general automation (CI, etc) with a baked in main branch assumption
- throw10920 5y ago> `main` is better. It's shorter, it's more descriptive, and costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive. All of these are true! I agree, "main" is a better name. However, as to the larger point, the individuals and groups advocating for these changes also don't advocate for similar changes (that is, things that have good benefits but come with a very high cost to implement due to breaking backwards compatibility) around technologies/terms that they don't consider to be "problematic". That strongly suggests that the driver isn't to improve technology, it's to shape language, with occasional incidental technological benefits - and the ignored technological regressions (it's harder to say "allowlist" than "whitelist", for instance, or to write applications that have a field to place in the user's preferred pronouns than just not address the user using pronouns at all).
- Pxtl 5y ago> However, as to the larger point, the individuals and groups advocating for these changes also don't advocate for similar changes (that is, things that have good benefits but come with a very high cost to implement due to breaking backwards compatibility) around technologies/terms that they don't consider to be "problematic". I actually know a social-justice oriented trans woman online who strongly advocates for the use of Tau instead of Pi because it is simpler and easier to learn. So sample of 1 there. Tau vs Pi is a perfect microcosm of this debate with the social justice arguments removed. See also metric vs imperial. The benefits are small but non-zero and localized to a handful of people, the new terminology is substantially simpler and cleaner, and the costs are primarily related to inertia and the comfort of people experienced with The Old Way.
- tomp 5y ago> costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive But there is a cost. You're losing a battle in the war of free speech vs Orwellian thought control. The woke (an offshoot of last-wave feminism, currently promoted mainly by the control-left strain of the Democratic party) are lying; they're not actually offended, they're just using that as an excuse (propaganda) and as an emotional appeal, to get you to agree to their arguments, and cede power to them. This is most obvious with "Latinx" which is pushed by white journalists & activists but which isn't even supported by the overwhelming majority of Latinos and Latinas in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx Don't believe me? Listen to what they (the woke) say themselves! > I wanted to start by focusing on the obvious one, Its harder for them to object to just one to start with, then once they admit the logic, we can expand the list from https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4450 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4450
- whymauri 5y agoI don't think Latinx is a good example. The GP mentions there's no functional cost to `main`, and this is true. Latinx has a functional cost in that the Spanish language literally does not support the phonetics of Latinx. That phrase is going to die soon and it never picked up in Latin America. Most likely the queer community in Latin America will come up with more effective slang. It took the US queer community decades, a century? To reclaim and come up with effective phrases -- I think the main issue here is lack of patience and a somewhat condescending attitude from American liberals that we, the actual hispanic diaspora, need our hands held. There is also what I've argued is a hierarchy of needs issue at play with LatinX. The problems facing the queer community in Latin America are more severe than those facing the US community, because it is a younger community in a more conservative atmosphere. Therefore, the effort is better spent advocating for table stakes, like marriage equality in some countries and reduced violence towards queer people -- there is no time to be wasted, right now, on the exact, precise terminology to use. And LatinX is not a way to win hearts and minds in this process. Edit: this is NOT support for Google's product, which clearly broken and not useful. This is an explanation of why LatinX specifically is not a good counter-example to `main` versus `master`. I hope this pre-empts someone coming in and calling me all 'woke' or whatever is the cool phrase for dismissing people these days.
- jwond 5y agoMy best friend was killed when a water main burst, and every time I am forced to use a branch named ‘main’ it causes me immense psychological stress. Since you suggest it “costs nothing to remove something someone might find offensive”, I propose it be changed to something else instead of main. \s
- nprz 5y agoSo let's say they Christians decide "git abort" is offensive, do we remove it. And then group X decides term Y is offensive, do we remove it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- flippinburgers 5y agoNo. It is just meant to trip up and confuse people so that they can be re-educated.