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Git itself is of course a social construct. It was invented to allow people to collaborate on code and have history and verify each others work. The compiler do

Git itself is of course a social construct. It was invented to allow people to collaborate on code and have history and verify each others work. The compiler doesn't care.

bluetomcat 3y ago
It's a collection of tools (commit, branch, merge, rebase) facilitating decentralised ad-hoc workflows. It's less of a VCS and more of a hacky diffing tool.
crabbone 3y ago
This isn't how the term is used... Since recently (think something like the 60s), applying the term "social construct" became a practice, especially common in humanities because a lot of concepts previously used in that area turned out to be bogus / ill-defined. For example, in anthropology, there was a shift where ethnicity used to be defined in some way (let's not dwell on the details, they certainly were problematic), and then someone came and said "well... ethnicity is a social construct", by which they meant "you can call this ethnicity, but I may call that other thing ethnicity, who knows what ethnicity really is... but as long as a large enough group of people agrees to use the term consistently, we are good". And this approach to definitions keeps spreading. Some such claims become more contentious because they may run into religious orthodoxy or social conservatism that like to hold on to older (but usually not so great) definitions. Like, for example, some will claim that "gender is a social construct" meaning that beside biological gender, society can invent any number of genders it likes, as long as people agree to accept those and perceive them as "real". But, regardless of whether you use "social construct" ironically (as to make fun of humanities majors) or actually believe it's a good way to proceed with definitions... I don't think you have anything to gain from claim that Git is a social construct. This is really only useful if you were struggling to define what Git is, and then there'd be groups of people who had competing definitions.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  True, I am just going along with the “Git Branches as a social construct” as a given.

Git itself is of course a social construct. It was invented to allow people to collaborate on code and have history and verify each others work. The compiler doesn't care.

bluetomcat 3y ago

It's a collection of tools (commit, branch, merge, rebase) facilitating decentralised ad-hoc workflows. It's less of a VCS and more of a hacky diffing tool.

crabbone 3y ago

This isn't how the term is used... Since recently (think something like the 60s), applying the term "social construct" became a practice, especially common in humanities because a lot of concepts previously used in that area turned out to be bogus / ill-defined. For example, in anthropology, there was a shift where ethnicity used to be defined in some way (let's not dwell on the details, they certainly were problematic), and then someone came and said "well... ethnicity is a social construct", by which they meant "you can call this ethnicity, but I may call that other thing ethnicity, who knows what ethnicity really is... but as long as a large enough group of people agrees to use the term consistently, we are good". And this approach to definitions keeps spreading. Some such claims become more contentious because they may run into religious orthodoxy or social conservatism that like to hold on to older (but usually not so great) definitions. Like, for example, some will claim that "gender is a social construct" meaning that beside biological gender, society can invent any number of genders it likes, as long as people agree to accept those and perceive them as "real". But, regardless of whether you use "social construct" ironically (as to make fun of humanities majors) or actually believe it's a good way to proceed with definitions... I don't think you have anything to gain from claim that Git is a social construct. This is really only useful if you were struggling to define what Git is, and then there'd be groups of people who had competing definitions.

quickthrower2 3y ago
True, I am just going along with the “Git Branches as a social construct” as a given.