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<sarcasm> Whaaaat? I thought so many lives were improved by making devteams replace all usages of "black/whitelist" with "block/allowlist". </sarcasm> Well,

<sarcasm> Whaaaat? I thought so many lives were improved by making devteams replace all usages of "black/whitelist" with "block/allowlist". </sarcasm> Well, except for the lives of the users, on-call engineers, 1st and 2nd level tech support, the product owners, and everyone else who had to deal with sudden, unexpected, hard to track bugs resulting from such BS changes. <sarcasm> Oh, ofc I apologise for my use of the word "list", which may be historically charged, and also non-inclusive to people who prefer unordered data. </sarcasm>

burnished 4y ago
Hey not all change is bad, that one in particular is just less ambiguous. Really wish we'd take the hint and do some language house keeping, maybe clean up the discrepancy between electrons and current.
- usrbinbash 4y ago
  > that one in particular is just less ambiguous. 1) Please show me an engineer who mistakes the meaning of the term "blacklist" in, say, an ACL system 2) The newspeak terms are no less ambiguous. Are the items on the list allowed exclusively or are they just granted special privilege like source IPs from which no authentication is required? Without context, which is provided by the surrounding system in any case, "block/allow" is just as nebulous as "black/white" Plus, it's one example among many. What ambiguity did "master" branches in repos confer? 3) Problems with ambiguity were not the reason given to introduce such changes. The reason given was that using the newspeak would someohow improve the lives of people experiencing racism, a claim for which I am still waiting for any concrete examples showcasing its validity > Hey not all change is bad As shown above, the change didn't solve any problems or provide tangible improvements, so it becomes change for changes sake, which is bad, always, under all circumstances, period.
  - burnished 4y ago
    [flagged]
tommiegannert 4y ago
> people who prefer unordered data. I think "list" is a much more non-inclusive term than that, since you are either on the list, or you're not. /s
- imgabe 4y ago
  Excuse me I have a tendency to drift to the left when I walk and I immediately assume you can only be using the word “list” to mock me. Please refrain from using this offensive language.
pancrufty 4y ago
As a non-American, the dumbest change that affects me daily, is the renaming of the master branch. Master means teacher in romance languages and its variations are part of daily usage. In git there's no "slave" part so it always meant "main" and not "owner" It affects me daily because "look on master" became "look on the main branch" for no advantage to absolutely anyone.
- franga2000 4y ago
  The strangest thing about the git branch controversy is that "master" was clearly used in a master/copy sense, just like you used to have a master music record that was then copied, but at the same time, basically every embedded communication protocol and many distributed computing systems still use terms like "bus master" and straight up "master-slave" configuration. Sure, for many protocols it's a very accurate description, but if we're going to try and remove such language from tech, why not start with the places where the words actually mean the same thing, not just happen to be homographs. (I do support the master-main change in git for other reasons tho: it's much easier to translate and more natural to say. "Master record" is a term that never got translated into many languages, or at least not in a way that still makes sense for git)
  - slackdog 4y ago
    I believe these sort of 'word bans' are motivated by Whorfianism; basically the idea that the sort of language we use can influence (or even set the bounds of) the kind of thoughts people have. But scientific evidence for Whorfianism is weak at best, and starts to seem particularly absurd when you try to state plainly exactly what you're trying to accomplish in situations like this. In this case, the idea seems to be that we can denormalize the practice of slavery by eliminating metaphorical references to slavery. If you think about this, it's obviously a complete farce. The sort of people who engage in slavery today are not enabled to do so by such metaphors. And those apathetic to the problem of modern slavery, who might otherwise be doing something about it, were not made apathetic by the metaphors. The premise of fighting slavery by eliminating metaphors to slavery is pure pseudoscience of the highest order.
  - 4y ago
op00to 4y ago
Using inclusive language never bothered me. Never saw a bug related to inclusive language, and I worked on software I am confident everyone on HN uses.
- usrbinbash 4y ago
  Please tell me, what exactly makes this language "inclusive"? Whos lives got measurably better because of it, and in what way? What specific instances of racism were avoided because of it? Which bad political decisions that would have been reverted because of it?

burnished 4y ago

Hey not all change is bad, that one in particular is just less ambiguous. Really wish we'd take the hint and do some language house keeping, maybe clean up the discrepancy between electrons and current.

usrbinbash 4y ago
> that one in particular is just less ambiguous. 1) Please show me an engineer who mistakes the meaning of the term "blacklist" in, say, an ACL system 2) The newspeak terms are no less ambiguous. Are the items on the list allowed exclusively or are they just granted special privilege like source IPs from which no authentication is required? Without context, which is provided by the surrounding system in any case, "block/allow" is just as nebulous as "black/white" Plus, it's one example among many. What ambiguity did "master" branches in repos confer? 3) Problems with ambiguity were not the reason given to introduce such changes. The reason given was that using the newspeak would someohow improve the lives of people experiencing racism, a claim for which I am still waiting for any concrete examples showcasing its validity > Hey not all change is bad As shown above, the change didn't solve any problems or provide tangible improvements, so it becomes change for changes sake, which is bad, always, under all circumstances, period.
- burnished 4y ago
  [flagged]

tommiegannert 4y ago

> people who prefer unordered data. I think "list" is a much more non-inclusive term than that, since you are either on the list, or you're not. /s

imgabe 4y ago
Excuse me I have a tendency to drift to the left when I walk and I immediately assume you can only be using the word “list” to mock me. Please refrain from using this offensive language.

pancrufty 4y ago

As a non-American, the dumbest change that affects me daily, is the renaming of the master branch. Master means teacher in romance languages and its variations are part of daily usage. In git there's no "slave" part so it always meant "main" and not "owner" It affects me daily because "look on master" became "look on the main branch" for no advantage to absolutely anyone.

franga2000 4y ago
The strangest thing about the git branch controversy is that "master" was clearly used in a master/copy sense, just like you used to have a master music record that was then copied, but at the same time, basically every embedded communication protocol and many distributed computing systems still use terms like "bus master" and straight up "master-slave" configuration. Sure, for many protocols it's a very accurate description, but if we're going to try and remove such language from tech, why not start with the places where the words actually mean the same thing, not just happen to be homographs. (I do support the master-main change in git for other reasons tho: it's much easier to translate and more natural to say. "Master record" is a term that never got translated into many languages, or at least not in a way that still makes sense for git)
- slackdog 4y ago
  I believe these sort of 'word bans' are motivated by Whorfianism; basically the idea that the sort of language we use can influence (or even set the bounds of) the kind of thoughts people have. But scientific evidence for Whorfianism is weak at best, and starts to seem particularly absurd when you try to state plainly exactly what you're trying to accomplish in situations like this. In this case, the idea seems to be that we can denormalize the practice of slavery by eliminating metaphorical references to slavery. If you think about this, it's obviously a complete farce. The sort of people who engage in slavery today are not enabled to do so by such metaphors. And those apathetic to the problem of modern slavery, who might otherwise be doing something about it, were not made apathetic by the metaphors. The premise of fighting slavery by eliminating metaphors to slavery is pure pseudoscience of the highest order.
- 4y ago

op00to 4y ago

Using inclusive language never bothered me. Never saw a bug related to inclusive language, and I worked on software I am confident everyone on HN uses.

usrbinbash 4y ago
Please tell me, what exactly makes this language "inclusive"? Whos lives got measurably better because of it, and in what way? What specific instances of racism were avoided because of it? Which bad political decisions that would have been reverted because of it?