7 ms·

I use `master` in all my repos because I've been using it since forever and it never has once occurred to me "oh shit I better change it to `main` this time in

I use `master` in all my repos because I've been using it since forever and it never has once occurred to me "oh shit I better change it to `main` this time in case `master` may offend somebody some day. Unfortunately, that's the last thing on my mind when I'm in programming mode. Now that everything is `master`, maybe it is just a simple git command to change it to `main`. But, my fear is it'll subtly break something and I just don't have enough hours left in my life to accept yet unknown risk that it'll cost me even more hours, just to make some random sensitive developer not get offended one day.

kridsdale1 8mo ago
At Meta, when this mass push for the rename happened across the industry, a few people spent nearly the full year just shepherding the renaming of master to main, and white box/black box to allowlist/blocklist. This let them claim huge diff counts and major contributions to DEI and get promos.
- tucnak 8mo ago
  They measure LoC contributions at FB?
- jihadjihad 8mo ago
  Same at my org at the time, blacklist was nixed, no matter how many times the question, "What color is ink on a page?" was brought up.
  - layer8 8mo ago
    > What color is ink on a page? Middle gray, according to modern UX designers. ;)
    - pmontra 8mo ago
      You are lucky. It's often light gray on thin fonts.
  - pbhjpbhj 8mo ago
    The colour of the ink is not where "blacklist" comes from though? It's not from supposed skin colour either... Blocklist makes more sense in most scenarios.
  - 8organicbits 8mo ago
    Seems like a bad faith question, unfortunate that it was asked multiple times. Blacklist is derived from a definition where black means "evil, bad, or undesirable". When you say that ink is black, you're using a different definition, which relates to color. I don't know if I see the objection to blackbox, which uses a definition of "unknown". Personally, I think the harm is small but I look to people of color for guidance and prefer the more descriptive deny-list where I can. Cuts down on possible confusion for non-native English speakers too.
    - reenorap 8mo ago
      The irony is that the term "Black" was precisely chosen by Black civil rights activists in the 1960s. This wasn't a term given by white people, it was specifically chosen by Blacks, because of its negative connotations. They wanted to embrace its negative connotations and turn it on its head, and that's where terms like "Black is beautiful" came from. They didn't want to be ashamed of it, that's why they embraced it. Black was not a term of shame, it was a term of power. Now, the left wing activists have turned it on its head again, and now saying that the term "black" is shameful and racist. It's bizarre how ignorant people are who say the term "blacklist" is racist.
      - ahhhhnoooo 8mo ago
        I think you've constructed a strawman. Can you point to evidence that people think the word black is shameful and racist? Or maybe you are confusing the idea that 'using black to mean bad and white to mean good' is a problem? Those are two different concepts.
    - 1718627440 8mo ago
      Blacklist and Whitelist come from the behaviour of light on coloured surfaces. A black surface absorbs all light, a white reflects it. There is also Graylist. I don't know of any connotation of black meaning "evil, bad, or undesirable". If anything black means "missing or vanished". Maybe that is different in your culture, but I never heard of it until now. Tons of things in everyday life are black including the most letters, signs and a lot of devices. The only thing that comes to my mind is tooth decay or pestilence, but that is hardly anything connotated with the colour per se.
- yokoprime 8mo ago
  This is why diffs / LoC is a terrible metric. It shows nothing other than a willingness to push large changesets upstream.
joshuamcginnis 8mo ago
Also, git's "master" branch is named after a master recording or master copy, the canonical original from which duplicates are made. There is literally no reason for it be offensive except for those who retroactively associate the word with slavery.
- imdsm 8mo ago
  I'll change my default branches to main when Masterclass change their name to Mainclass
  - zugi 8mo ago
    And mastering a subject is changed to maining it?
- ffsm8 8mo ago
  Yeah, with replica it made a little sense. Was still silly, but at least the official master/slave terminology actually didn't fully make sense either... So the replica rebrand felt justified to me. With git it was basically entirely driven by SJW that felt empowered by people accepting the replica rebrand
  - r14c 8mo ago
    imo the `main` thing was mostly driven by people trying to appease the social justice crowd without understanding much about the movement. Its a bit of woo in my mind because there are still systemic injustices out there that are left uncontested, and using main doesn't really contest anything substantial. I don't really care what the default branch is called tho so I'm willing to play along.
- ear7h 8mo ago
  Nope, the term comes from bitkeeper which does refer to master/slave. See this email for some references: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/msg00066.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
TacticalCoder 8mo ago
[flagged]
- maest 8mo ago
  The whole master/main thing is a dinstinctly American culture war issue which, unfortunately, infected the rest of the world.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
hungryhobbit 8mo ago
> But, my fear is it'll subtly break something and I just don't have enough hours left in my life to accept yet unknown risk that it'll cost me even more hours, Yeah, it's not like 99% of the world has already switched from master to main already (without any major problems) ...
- stevekemp 8mo ago
  You'll find CI/CD automation probably needs to be updated. (Triggering different actions when merges to the default branch happen, or perhaps just deployments.) These are the kinda local things that the parent was probably referring to.
tom_ 8mo ago
Thank you for creating the containment thread.
yokoprime 8mo ago
Im just tuning out of the whole master vs main discussion. I use whatever is the default branch name of my current project OR what git init gives me. When / if git init produces a default branch named main, i'll use that.
botusaurus 8mo ago
not on your mind, yet you found the time to write this comment are you sure this is about time/breaking and not "being told how to think"?
doetoe 8mo ago
In current times, there will be more people offended that some prefer to use "main" rather than "master", than people that will be offended if "master" is used
drcongo 8mo ago
Haven't got enough hours to type fewer characters, but have got plenty of time to go karma-fishing about it on an almost barely tangentially relevant HN thread. Cool.

kridsdale1 8mo ago

At Meta, when this mass push for the rename happened across the industry, a few people spent nearly the full year just shepherding the renaming of master to main, and white box/black box to allowlist/blocklist. This let them claim huge diff counts and major contributions to DEI and get promos.

tucnak 8mo ago
They measure LoC contributions at FB?
jihadjihad 8mo ago
Same at my org at the time, blacklist was nixed, no matter how many times the question, "What color is ink on a page?" was brought up.
- layer8 8mo ago
  > What color is ink on a page? Middle gray, according to modern UX designers. ;)
  - pmontra 8mo ago
    You are lucky. It's often light gray on thin fonts.
- pbhjpbhj 8mo ago
  The colour of the ink is not where "blacklist" comes from though? It's not from supposed skin colour either... Blocklist makes more sense in most scenarios.
- 8organicbits 8mo ago
  Seems like a bad faith question, unfortunate that it was asked multiple times. Blacklist is derived from a definition where black means "evil, bad, or undesirable". When you say that ink is black, you're using a different definition, which relates to color. I don't know if I see the objection to blackbox, which uses a definition of "unknown". Personally, I think the harm is small but I look to people of color for guidance and prefer the more descriptive deny-list where I can. Cuts down on possible confusion for non-native English speakers too.
  - reenorap 8mo ago
    The irony is that the term "Black" was precisely chosen by Black civil rights activists in the 1960s. This wasn't a term given by white people, it was specifically chosen by Blacks, because of its negative connotations. They wanted to embrace its negative connotations and turn it on its head, and that's where terms like "Black is beautiful" came from. They didn't want to be ashamed of it, that's why they embraced it. Black was not a term of shame, it was a term of power. Now, the left wing activists have turned it on its head again, and now saying that the term "black" is shameful and racist. It's bizarre how ignorant people are who say the term "blacklist" is racist.
    - ahhhhnoooo 8mo ago
      I think you've constructed a strawman. Can you point to evidence that people think the word black is shameful and racist? Or maybe you are confusing the idea that 'using black to mean bad and white to mean good' is a problem? Those are two different concepts.
  - 1718627440 8mo ago
    Blacklist and Whitelist come from the behaviour of light on coloured surfaces. A black surface absorbs all light, a white reflects it. There is also Graylist. I don't know of any connotation of black meaning "evil, bad, or undesirable". If anything black means "missing or vanished". Maybe that is different in your culture, but I never heard of it until now. Tons of things in everyday life are black including the most letters, signs and a lot of devices. The only thing that comes to my mind is tooth decay or pestilence, but that is hardly anything connotated with the colour per se.
yokoprime 8mo ago
This is why diffs / LoC is a terrible metric. It shows nothing other than a willingness to push large changesets upstream.

joshuamcginnis 8mo ago

Also, git's "master" branch is named after a master recording or master copy, the canonical original from which duplicates are made. There is literally no reason for it be offensive except for those who retroactively associate the word with slavery.

imdsm 8mo ago
I'll change my default branches to main when Masterclass change their name to Mainclass
- zugi 8mo ago
  And mastering a subject is changed to maining it?
ffsm8 8mo ago
Yeah, with replica it made a little sense. Was still silly, but at least the official master/slave terminology actually didn't fully make sense either... So the replica rebrand felt justified to me. With git it was basically entirely driven by SJW that felt empowered by people accepting the replica rebrand
- r14c 8mo ago
  imo the `main` thing was mostly driven by people trying to appease the social justice crowd without understanding much about the movement. Its a bit of woo in my mind because there are still systemic injustices out there that are left uncontested, and using main doesn't really contest anything substantial. I don't really care what the default branch is called tho so I'm willing to play along.
ear7h 8mo ago
Nope, the term comes from bitkeeper which does refer to master/slave. See this email for some references: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/msg00066.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...

TacticalCoder 8mo ago

[flagged]

maest 8mo ago
The whole master/main thing is a dinstinctly American culture war issue which, unfortunately, infected the rest of the world.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

hungryhobbit 8mo ago

> But, my fear is it'll subtly break something and I just don't have enough hours left in my life to accept yet unknown risk that it'll cost me even more hours, Yeah, it's not like 99% of the world has already switched from master to main already (without any major problems) ...

stevekemp 8mo ago
You'll find CI/CD automation probably needs to be updated. (Triggering different actions when merges to the default branch happen, or perhaps just deployments.) These are the kinda local things that the parent was probably referring to.

tom_ 8mo ago

Thank you for creating the containment thread.

yokoprime 8mo ago

Im just tuning out of the whole master vs main discussion. I use whatever is the default branch name of my current project OR what git init gives me. When / if git init produces a default branch named main, i'll use that.

botusaurus 8mo ago

not on your mind, yet you found the time to write this comment are you sure this is about time/breaking and not "being told how to think"?

doetoe 8mo ago

In current times, there will be more people offended that some prefer to use "main" rather than "master", than people that will be offended if "master" is used

drcongo 8mo ago

Haven't got enough hours to type fewer characters, but have got plenty of time to go karma-fishing about it on an almost barely tangentially relevant HN thread. Cool.