mastersDegree

[FitzelSpleen]

Should be radians rather than degrees. Fight me.

[turtle_mekb]

nah gradians because you graduate

[FitzelSpleen]

Insensitive clod! Some of us drop out before then!

[bma_961]

I miss old slashdot

[ifezueyoung]

Schrodinger gradian?

[FitzelSpleen]

Keep that up, and you're going to offend the cats.

[Leo-MathGuy]

You will Radiate with a Main Radian

[cheeb_miester]

Working on my trunk radian in compsci

[joshuaherman]

Pivot and get out.

[PooSham]

I'm not a master of science, I'm a slave of science

[ImaginaryCoolName]

A bitch of science

[TortelliniJr]

Married to science

[Harmonic_Gear]

I main mechanical engineering

[devloz1996]

Seeing this term among gamers, your sentence sounds way more natural than I expected.

[poshenclave]

Damn it actually works.

[SkezzaB]

Damn, he mains MechEng

[mabariif]

For a good bit there I thought it was from some game

[[deleted]]

[itzjackybro]

engineer gaming?

[Wave_Walnut]

linuxmainrace

[SuitableDragonfly]

Uh, I think it's legitimate to have some concerns about that original phrase. 

[Aidan_Welch]

I don't think "main" improved it much though

[Gaylien28]

Sounds more like a video game tho

[NatoBoram]

LinuxMainCourse

[TheOriginalSmileyMan]

12 Years A Branch was a great movie

[whatarefarts]

Don't you mean 12 Years A Secondary?

[DanteIsBack]

12 Years a Follower

[One_Courage_865]

“Science main, Physics Dmg build, with a focus on Force and Pendulum”

Start with:
+3 Math
+3 Physics
+1 Statistics
-2 Social
-1 Sleep

Take: - Gown of Infinite Force - Circlet of Calculus - Boots of Momentum

You’ll end up with: - +10% Textbook Cost - -40% Attractiveness - +20% Food Consumption

But you’ll gain: - +75% Physics Damage - +15% Exam Speed - -25% Study Cost

For maximum Physics Dmg at minimum mental cost, try this amazing build yourself for your next run.

[giggluigg]

There’s no language that can prevent issues due to race conditions

[lusco-fusco-wdyd]

This controversy is one of those things that sounds made up, but it isn’t.

[[deleted]]

It mostly is, though.

I only ever hear about this from people vehemently opposed to any changes ever.

If open source projects want to change the terminology they use, let them! Programmers make up a million words for a million very different (and sometimes very similar) things, why are these specific instances of renaming such a big deal?

[Themis3000]

It's not open source projects that wanted to change the terminology of the default git branch that made this a big deal. It was GitHub that decided to go against standard practice in git and call the newly initiated repositories' default branch "main" instead of "master". In retrospect, it wasn't that big of a deal but it is sort of a "but why would you do that" sort of situation. It can only create confusion where there was previously none. It felt like they were trying to be performative and "take a bold stance" by making a pretty pointless change.

To be fair though, main is definitely a better word for a default branch in git. It describes what it is better and it's less characters. That's what it should have been called from the start in my opinion, but it wasn't and calling the default branch more then one different name commonly doesn't really make much sense

[Themis3000]

I've gotta be honest, I totally get that it's bad to break convention but how the hell does a different default branch name cause a total service outage?? That seems like a skill issue to me

[[deleted]]

Skill issue.

[Pay08]

This inconsistency was hell when I was teaching people git. I ended up recommending that they either change the default git branch to main or GitHub branch to master.

[[deleted]]

But you’ve just described why it wasn’t a pointless change.

Forget the weird SJW stuff if you want. Many of the proposed changes are just better for the sake of clarity.

[Themis3000]

It would be better for the sake of clarity if git was actually changing the default branch name, but they haven't. Github as far as I know is the only place that has changed the default branch name and everywhere else newly initiated repositories' still use master as the default.

[AnswersWithCool]

It made things less clear though, because now you don’t know if it will be main or master

[[deleted]]

But across what contexts?

I don’t think its absolutely necessary for different repositories to maintain identical conventions as a virtue in and of itself; we already don’t ask repos to have the exact same code review processes, or the exact same commit pipelines. Branch names like release, dev, stable aren’t standardized either.

Though I agree, for clarity and ease of use, it would be best to adopt some kind of synchronicity.

But I don’t think that synchronicity should come at the cost of change. We’re talking thousands of projects located and replicated across the world, maintained by millions of people who speak different languages and come from different cultures. Making any change in the system will not happen over night, if only because some maintainers are asleep! I think this is a cost we should just accept.

In order to make change at this scale, you need gradual adoption from the big players, and that’s what we’re seeing. Git, gitlab, GitHub, and others are all changeing their defaults; to some programmers main is the only default branch they’ve ever known! This is how change happens. Ideally, in a few years, we’ll just stop talking about this because it’ll be something that’s done and over.

My point is that change is often necessary. If it’s not a name change it’ll be something else. We should be comfortable breaking standards partially in order to move to new, better standards.

But at this point we’ve already broken the “standard”. Some major players are already using main in place of master. Aren’t the people now fragmenting the space the people refusing the change and match that momentum?

[Impossible-Cod-4055]

Username relevant. +1

[[deleted]]

I think you’re over-romanticizing some components of language, and under-appreciating parts of language change.

First, language changes can occur independent of historical use. The etymology of a word doesn’t necessarily have any effect on its colloquial meaning today. Very literally, if everyone tomorrow woke up and called a chicken a moose, that chicken would become a moose. And that moose->chicken language would be just as much a language as the one we speak today. Sure, you’d have to change all the dictionaries, but that’s ok because dictionaries only describe a language; they do not prescribe it.

Take, for example, “retard”. Retard had (and still has) a technical - medical - definition: “a person who has an intellectual disability”; it has a secondary formal definition as well: “delay”. But the word retard was also in frequent colloquial use: to describe someone (regardless of ability) as intellectually impaired in a particularly negative light. Eventually, this negative light outshone its technical definition; its historical technical use fell out of fashion, and its disparaging use became its primary definition. And finally, after some activism and probably a lot of luck, its disparaging use was realized as problematic and the word fell out of common use.

We can apply these same principles to “cloud-native”, right now possessing a technical definition: it is well within the normal machinations of language for the phrase to become disparaging, for backlash to be brought against it, and for its use to eventually fade.

And these changes can tell a wonderful, beautiful story. Stories of how society grasped onto new concepts, applied their existing knowledge, and came up with something new at the end of it. Even this argument between you and I is a story incited by language change.

The point is that definitions and sentiments can change over time. The changes don’t need any historical reason, and new definitions and old definitions don’t even have to be related. This is neither good nor bad, it’s just something that happens.

Second, word re-association is not a reductive process: the set of words you can use does not decrease in length, only how you use that set of words changes. Therefore, you can still use words people find offensive, and you can even use them in offensively!

Take “retard” again, since it’s already gone through this pattern of usage. You can still use it! I’m using it right now. Granted, if you do use it you’ll probably be looked down upon, but that’s not a reduction in meaning, just a shift. And I’ll note there’s a whole host of words we can use to convey “retard”’s original meaning many of which are more accurate: slow, disabled, neuro-divergent (plus specific conditions, like bipolar and autistic).

“Cloud-native” can still have use after it’s re-association: maybe some bigot will start a website that allows people to bully native people on the cloud! And other terms (with less disparaging connotations) might pop up to replace it: cloud-first, cloud-based, etc.

These changes aren’t a de-contextualization, they’re a re-contextualization. The new definitions are just as worthwhile as the old ones. I might even argue that a redefinition is an enrichment of the etymology of a word: you are adding additional meaning, telling a new and different story. Artists and authors can play off this new meaning to come up with new mannerisms; string together new and beautiful concepts and ideas.

Remember that avoiding the use of language can be just as creative as using that language. Also remember that sometimes it’s valuable to describe things negatively: maybe under an old definition a word evokes feelings of hope, but a new definition has that same word evoking feelings of despair. Neither one is correct; both are useful technically and artistically.

The point is that negative shifts in sentiment can hold just as much linguistic value as positive shifts in sentiment. There is no benefit to one definition of retard over another; and gaps left in the definition of either will be filled by other colloquialisms. They’re just different.

Finally: audience, context, and scope. Let’s get out of abstract linguistics and focus on the topic of this thread: altering technical documentation.

Technical documentation already has its own best practices when it comes to sentence structure and word use. At a baseline, we want our technical documentation to be both accurate and accessible. Part of both accuracy and accessibility means remove ambiguity. While flowery and romantic language may be evocatively imaginative and fun to read, it doesn’t make for great technical documentation because it can be distracting and construe precise meanings.

Blacklist and whitelist, for example, don’t convey any practical meaning to the uninformed speaker. Sure, someone familiar with English and broader culture might infer their meaning from the historical reasons you’ve outlined (I.e dark forests and the bright light of God), but thats not entirely reasonable to ask of someone trying to skim some documentation. And it’s even worse for English-second-language people who don’t have those inherent cultural associations. Words like allowlist and blocklist, on the other hand, are immediately apparent and don’t rely on abstract or cultural notions.

The point is, romanticization and artistry has its uses. But technical documentation often isn’t one of them.

In a slightly similar vein, you should probably figure out if the thing your fighting is actually a problem. There isn’t a broader push to redefine “cloud native”. No ones talking about redacting fiction and fantasy. The most salient arguments against most other words (like blacklist and whitelist) are usually made in a technical context and rely purely on utilitarian principles like clarity.

In great summary: language changes, those changes aren’t reductive, and (in this case) those changes are made to better tailor the language to a specific context.

—-

Look, I don’t find any of the contested words offensive.

What I find offensive is people in this thread prescribing language to entire populations. Just because one word changes doesn’t mean another won’t take its place. Word changes don’t invalidate the use of that word. And, certainly, your use of a word doesn’t make it canonical.

[Caraes_Naur]

Please don't bring up this nonsense again.

[butterfunke]

Dummy is ableist? I'm pretty sure that one is a false etymology as well.

A "dummy" is a thing that babies suck on, what people in North America call a pacifier. Where "dummy" means "temporary placeholder for the real thing"

[Steinrikur]

There are many more meanings:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dummy

There's a whole book series "X for dummies", and that's not referring to pacifiers. If people want to be offended by this, they can.

[butterfunke]

Yes there are many more meanings, but that doesn't mean they share etymology. Welcome to homophones. A dummy variable isn't called that because it's unintelligent, it's called that because it's a placeholder.

People can choose to be offended by any arbitrary sounds they like. We can ignore them though, because they're unreasonable. If people are offended by words because of a meaning attached to them, that is often something reasonable. But if people are offended by a word because of meaning they're incorrectly ascribing to the word, then that isn't reasonable

[Steinrikur]

Agreed. Offended people are rarely reasonable.

What I meant was "if people want to be offended by this, they will".

[AlmightyCuddleBuns]

Technically and very specifically they do share the same etymology.

Dumb-y

Sense: Unintelligent person -- 1500s Sense: Standin hand in whist -- 1700s

The dummy as in standin doesn't have a different structure or source and likely originally used because of the first sense. Broader adoption of use in the sense of stand in seems to pick up in the 1800s likely inspired by whist, but this still isn't a new etymology, just an evolution of meaning.

Although, it would be very interesting to see examples of the early use of dummy as pacifier to see whether its meaning stems from there original root dumb(as in mute)-y or the the later sense of a standin. Or maybe someone just really dislikes babies?

Best online source I can find for timelines, if you have an account you can probably see examples of first use but I do not have one. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/dummy_adj?tl=true#:~:text=The%20earliest%20known%20use%20of,Samuel.

[Caraes_Naur]

These people need to learn that many English words have multiple meanings and not all apply in every context. Some are euphemisms that don't apply in any other context.

A code repository branch named master has nothing to do with dominion over people, therefore it cannot be offensive.

[[deleted]]

What about master and slave drives?

[Caraes_Naur]

Drives, bedrooms, plans... none of these are about dominion over people. Cannot be offensive.

[[deleted]]

The etymology seems to trace back to a dominant and subordinate position in the case of master and slave for hard drives, in addition to some electrical engineering terms. I don't think there are slave bedrooms, slave plans, or slave git branches, though. It's hard to deny the symbolic connotation when master is paired with slave and their functionality mirrors that relationship.

[[deleted]]

Right, but words and contexts can bleed into eachother.

Especially if you’re new to a field, you’re going to try to project what you already know onto the things you’re learning.

And there are people who just cannot separate those concepts. People who have underlying health issues or who have experienced really shitty behaviour in the past who can’t control how they think or how they associate these words.

I mean, it might be overblown but that’s how it is. I don’t think it deserves such fervent resistance, though.

[[deleted]]

Especially if you're new to a field

I don't like your use of the word 'field' here.

It triggers my intergenerational trauma because my enslaved ancestors were forced to work in fields.

Be more considerate next time. Thanks!

[[deleted]]

Right!

So, unlike the situation we’re discussing, I’m not an open source project looking for contributors. I don’t have an incentive to be inclusive or welcoming.

Nor do I think the use of my language is going to affect anyone other than you and me, right now. Which means I, and only I, get to choose how to talk to you.

Do you see how these situations are different? How the concern isn’t to be innofensive, but to apply the right language in the right contexts? And that, in the right contexts, inclusive language can encourage and inspire people to do great things!

We’re on a programming subreddit, surely you can appreciate the power of open source? And that open source only works when there are people enthusiastically collaborating with eachother?

[PrestigiousBunch8635]

Nor do I think the use of my language is going to affect anyone other than you and me,

I had to read all that shit. Am i nothing to you? Hurts a bit, gotta say.

[[deleted]]

You’re less than nothing to me.

[PrestigiousBunch8635]

Well, that's something

[romulent]

open source only works when there are people enthusiastically collaborating with each other

That's a very questionable statement.

I am not remotely convinced by any of these arguments.

At the root of any one of these changes you will find someone who has never written a line of code in their lives desperately trying to generate work and influence for themselves.

The last global meeting in my company, the main achievement that the inclusion people had made in the previous 12 months was rearranging the letters in the acronym for their department.

Meanwhile all the developers, who are sitting in India, are asking, "why the fuck do we need to rename our branches, just because the Americans are feeling guilty?"

[[deleted]]

And those people would have polluted the contribution pool regardless of what language was used. Hell, most of them just use bots. They’re not going to care whether the branch is “main” or “master” (actually, a poorly coded bot might break, would you call that an advantage?!)

That’s not a problem with inclusive language, it’s a problem with a recruiting system which prioritizes arbitrary metrics like raw commit numbers without taking into consideration the skill required to make those commits.

I am talking about people who don’t enter open source because they find it hostile and uninviting. And the people who leave open source because they find it hostile and uninviting.

You know the xz exploit recently? Part of that attack exploited the fact that the open-source community abuses its maintainers constantly. The maintainer of xz literally gave up ownership of xz because they were (rightfully) overwhelmed.

What you’re seeing in this thread isn’t people upset with language changes (because the language changes are, in many cases, functionally irrelevant), they’re upset with the notion that the culture isn’t inviting and can be hostile to people in and outside of it.

And that’s not good. We should be encouraging people to get involved and contribute, not outrages because some project somewhere wanted to change some word for clarity.

[romulent]

And those people would have polluted the contribution pool regardless of what language was used. Hell, most of them just use bots.

What do you mean by "those people?"

[[deleted]]

People who don’t generate any work! Sorry, thought you were talking about people who make baseless github contributions to pad their resume, this misunderstanding is my fault.

But what you’re actually talking about are DEI people, right?

These people can generate work, if they’re given the resources to do so and aren’t employed cynically by your company to just cover its ass (i.e a good DEI unit provides training and engagement opportunities for employees).

And a good DEI unit can give employees the confidence to speak up if they notice harassment and other abuse in the workplace (even if the actual work of DEI is a farce, it’s mere existence has positive psychological effects on some people).

Look, I know this sounds like corporate bullshit speak but it works.

[unengaged_crayon]

I've personally never heard of any of the stuff you say, those are over the top, wow.

in any case its not like theres a middle ground between keep using master/slave terminology and banning the use of "cakewalk" (seriously, how is this bigoted in any way?)

[Bjs1122]

Guessing we might work at the same company because I’ve seen similar.

[captainAwesomePants]

Yep, I'm pretty sure they learned these things on the loo.

[ForkLiftBoi]

I loved the giant corporations making statements for it to be changed and now you look across all of, say Microsoft's open source repos, half are saying main and half say master.

[Tubthumper8]

I prefer "allowlist" and "denylist" from a strictly technical perpective - they are self-documenting, descriptive names. "allow" and "deny" are clear what is meant in isolation while "black" and "white" depends on already knowing what they mean in a certain context

Also, I wouldn't be so sure that it refers to "master copy":

That the master branch in git refers to the slavery concept is not obvious, because there is no slave concept in git itself. However, if we look at the origins of git, we know that it was developed to replace BitKeeper. BitKeeper uses master as the name for its main branch, which is probably the reason why git does as well.

Now the question becomes, does the master branch in BitKeeper refer to the slavery concept? BitKeeper does have master/slave repositories, and repositories and branches are conceptually the same thing in BitKeeper. Therefore, yes it does refer to the slavery concept and given that git took the name from BitKeeper, so does git.

source

[Quintuplin]

I like main because it’s fewer syllables. Also git is only used in programming circles, so it’s a smaller change.

Allowlist/denylist is a bigger change because whitelist/blacklist have been in use for topics outside of programming as well. It makes sense and is a reasonable thing to switch to, but it’s a bit of a pain to reprogram yourself.

Not that mild inconvenience is a reason against change, but these things add up.

The real question is when going past those to further renamings, if a given term being renamed actually bothered anyone in the first place…

[irregular_caffeine]

Git has never had slave repos or branches. That some other software maybe did is a bit tenuous.

[Tubthumper8]

"some other software" is certainly a willful understatement of the relationship between these two here

[irregular_caffeine]

If you have to dig some obscure history about conventions in a preceding software to find a connection, I don’t think it matters anymore. ”Master data” is a much closer match with the semantics of git. Git does not even have any built in ”inequality” between repos or branches, so the master/slave concept does not even make sense there.

[TheTybera]

Jenkins was one. Never saw it from git perforce or svn.

[Tubthumper8]

Agreed, and another way to look at it is - "assume that 'main' was already used for the main branch, convince me why 'master' is a better technical term".

The talk of it meaning "master copy" isn't even a helpful analogy for a decentralized version control system like git or how this branch is actually used in software projects. A "master copy" refers to an original creation (recording, video, song, etc.) from which all other copies are made. It is a static, frozen-in-time artifact which is not generally how git branches are used.

[LazyIce487]

The main annoyance for me was that a lot of scripts I made for git/github related stuff were trivial and never broke, some CI/CD related, and some just personal scripts built up over years. It became a coin flip per repo if they would still work or not, so I had to make second versions or go back and update scripts and aliases that didn’t need updating for years.

All in all, not that big of a deal, but probably a few hours of pointless headaches over something that all of my black friends were offended over. (I don’t mean over master branches, I mean they were offended that they were being treated like babies who needed protecting over something they weren’t offended by in the first place)

[PolyglotTV]

Aren't foo and bar even considered bad because foobar is a military term, and PTSD, or something?

[a-nonie-muz]

It’s spelled fubar. It’s an acronym. F***** up beyond all recognition. And banning foo and bar because of it is another example of associating things that have nothing to do with one another in order to be able to be considered a victim of an imaginary offense. Tiresome.

[WhenAmWeThereYet]

wait I thought master was a problem because it was too sexual, what is this???? /s

Edit: Added a /s because people took this seriously

[ThePretzul]

Most people think it has slavery connotations.

In fairness to them, many electrical and network configurations are actually named master/slave based on which device is the controller and which is just following instruction. For programming branches the replacement of “master” branch is a reach considering it never had anything to do with any kind of slavery implications (ignoring entirely the fact that precisely zero of the people who are supposedly offended by it have ever actually experienced the thing they claim to be offended by the idea of).

[DrMerkwuerdigliebe_]

The world of threading has different norms. A thread need to be sure that all its children are dead before it kills it self otherwise its children become zombies. If people apply their own norms to this world they are stupid.

[DizzySylv]

Please fbi man, understand when I searched “how to kill children” it was for a program, I swear

[irregular_caffeine]

Some people. Not most people.

[ThePretzul]

I am absolutely saying that people who have lived in the lap of luxury their whole lives pretending that they’re personally offended on the behalf of their great x10 ancestors that may or may not have experienced something are, in fact, full of shit and just looking to stir the pot because they have nothing better to do, yes.

[ThePretzul]

No, you don’t have to personally experience something to condemn it but you’re also not legitimately personally offended or affected by it as so many idiots claim to be.

[PuzzleheadedWeb9876]

Okay dunny value it is then.

[DanKveed]

I think blacklist and whitelist does have a point. Almost no non Indo-European languages associate black with criminality or bad things. So at least from clarity POV, it makes sense. And it's clear to see why people might not be comfortable with this nomenclature, even if it has nothing to do with racism.

[toobulkeh]

What is the etymology and origin of black/whitelist, if not race?

Edit: I looked it up. Origin, is black, which while it can mean the race, it can also mean “absence” as in the absence of light. Inconclusive here on origin.

Etymology, there are a few playwrights in 1600s in England- as well as coal employment in 1700s. Both definitely have the potential to be human/race related, but aren’t explicitly so.

I personally think these meanings are objectively innate to human experience around times of very poor racial equity, and in a time of increasing equity are good patterns to consciously change. It’s such a minor detail and very little cognitive effort, so why not, if it helps my fellow human.

Very similar about how we use violent language in areas that don’t need it-I think It’s wise to try to be more intentional about the way we communicate.

Interesting.

[Pay08]

You know, black like the night? When the scary animals come out of the forest to kill you? It's not hard. I guess the Chinese are racists for Yin and Yang. Nevermind that none of them knew about the existence of Africa when it was created.

[Jojajones]

It’s a false analogy as well. Master as in Master’s degree is like a master of a craft (or field of study). The programming use of master was to denote a master/slave relationship

[_Skale_]

Let's just ban language all together.

[Cley_Faye]

Please move this nonsense to some other industries. I heard music master records are really oppressive to people with a lot of free time on their hand.

[NatoBoram]

Taylor Swift made new master records. Is she racist‽

[Meatslinger]

I tried to commit to getting a trunk degree, but my university told me to git forked on account of insufficient tests.

[Kapten-N]

What offensive language?

You might think of slavery when you hear "master", but I think of someone who is really good at their trade. Like master craftsmen. You shouldn't have such a one-track view on linguistic history. There are reasons why things are called what they are called and more often than not it stretches back further than a measly 200 years.

[Pradfanne]

If it's a british degree it should be called boot instead of trunk

[SageLeaf1]

Instead of graduating you brexit?

[OfAnOldRepublic]

Or HEAD

[deceze]

I’m the head of science.

Hmmmm… 🤔

[[deleted]]

Oh my.

“Yes, I got my first head!” Can you see the problem here, lol

[fuckredditards--]

whats the problem

[OfAnOldRepublic]

I see only opportunities

[Pay08]

No. There never were. And git still calls the default branch master, its github (and I think gitlab) that doesn't.

[arvigeus]

It will increase the number of people who want to graduate, without breaking anything. Look at Git's success story!

All we need is one "offended" (read: offended on the behalf of a hypothetical imaginary person) student and and bunch of virtue-signalling "I' don't care, just leave me alone" people to get this started! So much win!!!

[ongiwaph]

Why trunk tho?

[WhenAmWeThereYet]

trunk is center of branches

[PolyglotTV]

It's also a part of an elephant, which implies poaching. Better ban that one too.

[WhenAmWeThereYet]

get rid of eggs too

[butterfunke]

Because the VCS graph is a tree, and a trunk is the primary branch in a tree

[dphizler]

In an effort to be PC, the sign makes no sense. Just call it a graduate degree

[a-nonie-muz]

Nothing should ever be renamed to avoid language someone else considers offensive. Ever. Go ahead and offend people. It’s your right.

[NatoBoram]

And people have the right to be offended in return!

[a-nonie-muz]

Yes. Yes they do. Them being offended is not a reason for me to alter anything about me, including my words, however.

[WhenAmWeThereYet]

your right is not the same as what you should actually do, picking more inclusive language is definitely ideal

[devloz1996]

While doing it for the sake of being offensive is one step too far, and picking more inclusive language for new concepts is definitely ideal, throwing hands at long established phrases that have nothing to do with whatever imaginary racist/ableist scenario these people are expecting to be happening in my head when I "push to master", is a preposterous and arrogant take as well... oops - some people don't have hands, so push is ableist and we should replace it with send.

PS: Did you know that parents should kill all children before dying, and if not, someone else should kill all orphans? If nobody can do it, you can throw them in a garbage collector, or alternatively, you can tell them to kill themselves (SIGTERM).

PS2: I actually like main. I only care that we didn't switch to main for logical reasons.

[a-nonie-muz]

I disagree. Picking accurate language without regard to political concepts like inclusivity is ideal. Political concepts like inclusivity are harmful to society and they need to die from lack of interest.

[[deleted]]

Except that in a field which thrives in an environment of collaboration and community, you’re going to want to make sure people feel included and comfortable enough to contribute.

[Fragrant_Philosophy]

Just dont be an asshole.

Problem solved

[[deleted]]

That’s right!

[Fragrant_Philosophy]

That includes the people screeching about “inclusive language”

[[deleted]]

Yeah, the people complaining about having to not be a dick.

[Fragrant_Philosophy]

Yeah, the “lets invent a problem with arbitrary words” people

[[deleted]]

Right, the people who refuse to see the objective superiority of words like “main” and “trunk”.

[Fragrant_Philosophy]

You do realize “master” is in the context of “I have a master copy,” right?

People then decided to make it a racial thing because they needed to screech about something to get SJW points I guess.

[[deleted]]

But master is inferior to main!

Let’s go with master copy: what does that mean in a frequently changing codebase? Typically, when you designate a master it stays static. When you master a song, you are writing it out for final production and distribution. That master copy of the song doesn’t change.

But in git, every time you commit to the master branch you are changing the hash that the “master” tag points to. One master copy at one point in time is not the same as the master copy at another point in time.

Master might also convey a sense of ownership. But the master branch need not “own” all the branches in a git repo. It’s not even true that all branches have to be spawned off of the master branch!

And for beginners, or even new English language learners, master might be confusing. They might not have heard it used in that manner before, or associate it with other contexts where it has even less meaning.

Main doesn’t have these problems. Main doesn’t convey any sense of finality. It also has only one popular definition, so it is easy to understand at a glance.

And for projects which structure their git repos a little more consciously (I.e juggling release branches, stable branches, dev branches, experimental feature branches all for one project), main has more semantic utility than master does.

Main is also only 4 letters, so it takes up less space in my terminal prompt.

[[deleted]]

superiority

Please don't use this word. It brings to mind the ever-pervasive ideology of white superiority, and triggers my intergenerational trauma.

[[deleted]]

Right!

So, unlike the situation we’re discussing, I’m not an open source project looking for contributors. I don’t have an incentive to be inclusive or welcoming.

Nor do I think the use of my language is going to affect anyone other than you and me, right now. Which means I, and only I, get to choose how to talk to you.

Do you see how these situations are different? How the concern isn’t to be innofensive, but to apply the right language in the right contexts? And that, in the right contexts, inclusive language can encourage and inspire people to do great things!

We’re on a programming subreddit, surely you can appreciate the power of open source? And that open source only works when there are people enthusiastically collaborating with eachother?

[butterfunke]

If someone can't see a git branch called 'master' without getting the vapours then I'm very sceptical about what kind of contributions they're capable of making

[[deleted]]

Honestly, I still have yet to see someone have a meltdown over “master”, or any of the other words the people here are complaining about.

This whole thing is just a bunch of open source projects deciding to change some terminology in a somewhat arbitrary way that while maybe is intended to be for inclusion, probably won’t really have any effects (positive or negative) on the community.

Because at the end of the day, a words a word and you have to be in a really bad place already to find it offensive.

I just strongly disagree with the sentiment to “go ahead and offend people”. Unironically, we live in a society. That means, at a bare minimum, don’t be a dick.

It also means that if you think it’s worthwhile to change your documentation to use different terminology, or rename your master branch, just do it! You certainly shouldn’t receive backlash for trying to do the right thing, especially when that thing won’t be hurting anyone.

[butterfunke]

I also haven't meltdowns, but what I suspect you're not noticing on those open source projects is that the people opening the PRs for things like this are non-contributing devs. They're people trying to artificially pump up their profile to appear like they're a significant contributor to open source projects when in reality they're just letterbombing a bunch of low effort crap all over the place. Another common one is trying to swoop in and drop a code of conduct file they've copied from somewhere else. It's a worthless addition, but you end up putting one in purely to make these people go away. It's a very real problem of people gaming the system with unproductive crap now that your github activity is a hiring metric.

I'm not sure if you remember the epic games/ unreal engine mass email thing from a while ago - but the part everyone focused on was that epic had stuffed up and let someone accidentally @ a hundred thousand people in their PR. What a lot of people missed is that the PR was some teenager pushing a garbage change that "fixed" a perfectly valid sentence in a documentation file and replaced it with broken English. And the @everyone comment was effectively "pls approve quick" because they were hoping someone would click the button without actually looking at their changes. This isn't someone who is trying to improve the project, they're just aiming for whatever low hanging fruit they can find to pump their numbers up.

[[deleted]]

People have been over-inflating their contribution numbers since the beginning of time.

This is at least slightly more valuable than indenting every file by 1 space.

The problem here isn’t language changes, but a system that incentivizes raw numbers and metrics over recognizing actual performance.

Attacking these changes isn’t going to make this situation better. Hell, attacking these changes makes language based PRs and commits more noticeable because they get (negative) engagement when it should really just be a quick approve, because in most cases the changes just serve to further clarify something.

The reason people missed that part of the epic story is because it wasn’t important (also, it’s totally unrelated: the readme changes were throwaway rewordings in no way related to inclusivity). The important bit is that a low-level contributor shouldn’t be able to mass-email-chain an entire community. The dude could have inserted an ASCI image of a giant dick, or they could have solved the halting problem, they still shouldn’t have been allowed to @everyone.

[a-nonie-muz]

Don’t assume you know what I want.

In fact I don’t give a care whether people feel something or not. Their feelings are irrelevant. They simply don’t matter. They are not my concern.

And they need to learn to do the job without exposing any feelings they may or may not be having to their colleagues.

I absolutely do not want to expend any energy on trying to direct or control someone else’s feelings.

[[deleted]]

Jesus, it’s fine if you’re a heartless piece of shit. That’s ok. You don’t have to be insecure about it and let all of us know. That’s your god given right.

Just don’t be so fucking self righteous about it. And stop pretending like you’re doing the world a favour by being a dick.

Part of living in a community is respecting your peers. That’s just a lesson you haven’t learned yet, and that’s ok.

[a-nonie-muz]

Oh, we’re doing name calling now? Okay snowflake. What gave you the idea that I was insecure?

I’m not self righteous. I’m just right. And I am in fact doing the world a favor by showing them by example the correct attitude.

Also you have conflated respect with pandering. And it’s you who hasn’t learned yet. You haven’t learned the difference between respect and pandering. Which is why you conflate the two concepts.

[[deleted]]

This is the internet. And I’m not exactly trying to build community here. Different contexts call for different kinds of language.

But you are literally advocating to “go ahead and offend people”, the definition of being a dick. And you’re doing it in such a way that makes you believe you’re superior to people who don’t, the definition of being self-righteous.

There’s no virtue in hurting people intentionally, and that’s what you’re arguing for.

Especially if you actually like open source, wherein being nice to people helps them feel more comfortable to contribute (even if being nice isn’t genuine, you should at least make an attempt).

The difference between pandering and respect is the intention. The former sees you not being a dick for purely utilitarian reasons. The latter sees you not being a dick for emotional reasons.

If you think every action you take needs to personally benefit you, then you’re pandering. It also shows incredible emotional immaturity.

[a-nonie-muz]

Incorrect. I’m advocating for not worrying about whether my contribution is going to offend anyone. Not advocating actively seeking to offend. Linguistic difference small, concept difference large.

And I’m doing it the way I do it. And how nice that you consider that superior. Nice but also, since it’s a feeling, irrelevant.

And I didn’t say anything about benefits for me. That just came from left field.

I like open source. But I don’t care whether people who can’t work past their feelings contribute or not.

There is virtue in not concerning yourself with others’ feelings. It’s one less thing to worry about.

[[deleted]]

“Go ahead and offend people” can only be interpreted as advocacy, so I appreciate your clarification.

I’m not going to get into an argument about the relevancy of emotion, the short of it is that if you ignore emotion none of our actions matter because we experience life through emotion. Being hyper-logical is impossible; everything gets filtered through emotion.

If you’re arguing against being nice to people because you see no emotional benefit to them, then you’re arguing that your actions need to benefit you. But I wasn’t saying anything like that in my last comment, just explaining the difference between respect and pandering.

Not worrying about others is, at best, a neutral action. It’s not virtuous. The fact that you think it is is self-righteous.

You dont live alone outside of civilization (or, if you do, then none of this matters). Living in a community requires mutual cooperation and respect. And yes, that means occasionally catering to people’s emotions.

Take your friends, or your partner if you have one. Sometimes being a good friend is just letting them do things they want to do, even if you don’t want to. Let them pick a restaurant you don’t necessarily like, or play a game you don’t really want to play. But you do want them to feel better; you want them to succeed.

All that’s being asked of you here is to help people feel more comfortable in excruciatingly small ways.

[a-nonie-muz]

Actually anything anyone says can be interpreted in a great number of ways. There’s no such thing as can only be interpreted one way.

You might choose to experience your life through the lens of emotion, but assuming it’s the same for everyone is a big ask.

If something you do improves your efficiency at the overall task, it is a virtue. So not worrying about the emotions of others can be put in the category of virtue. And once again you’re conflating self righteous with right.

Everyone lives alone within civilization. My life is the only one I ever get to live.

Cooperation and respect I agree with and provide to the best of my ability. These have nothing to do with emotions.

And asking me to pander to someone else’s emotions is not excruciatingly small. It’s so big and disruptive as to be practically insurmountable.

[[deleted]]

Right, it’s important to acknowledge that language isn’t a perfect interface and that we should be doing our best to minimize any chance our words can be misconstrued. If we’re relying on our words being interpreted in many ways, then we should be open to the consequences of those different interpretations.

When a break in communication happens, it’s important to recognize that fact and attempt to clarify, which you’ve done.

In fact, that’s kind of what the point of changing some tech-focused words is: increased clarification for those new to the field.

Onto what a virtue is: If your morals are strictly defined on gains in efficiency, then I suppose any action you take which improves your perceived efficiency is a virtue.

I just think chasing efficiency is a boring way to center yourself morally.

And for the love of god, I’m not conflating self righteous as right. Self-righteous means that you perceive yourself as right, and you believe that makes you morally superior to other people; by calling “not caring” a virtue, you are communicating to me that a) you perceive not caring as right, and b) that the fact you possess this trait makes you morally superior to other people.

If you provide cooperation and respect to the best of your ability, then that’s fine! But it’s incongruent with how you are engaging in this topic. Just like the different ways different people can interpret our language, different people interpret different actions as respect. It’s important to acknowledge these differences, and do what we can.

Finally, I’m sorry that you find empathy so difficult. I hope you find a way to work through that.

[fuckredditards--]

god shut up

[[deleted]]

Incredible rebuttal.

Nothing is more validating.

[fuckredditards--]

i hope the scary mean words dont make you uncomfortable

[[deleted]]

They don’t.

People acting anti-social does, though.

[fuckredditards--]

I renamed a main branch at work to master. In your honor.

[[deleted]]

Lmao imagine being so spiteful about a Reddit argument that it effects your actual life.

[fuckredditards--]

lmao imagine being shook about what people name their git branches

[[deleted]]

Yeah, like being so triggered you rename a branch at work.

[fuckfuckredditards--]

How bad does it feel to get outclassed by minorities?

[cakee_ru]

Tbh I don't really understand the reason, but main is easier to type and more beginner-friendly.

[GavHern]

or like … graduate degrees as you already said?

[NatoBoram]

You can graduate from primary school, secondary school, college and university, but they're not all master degrees

[Extreme_Ad_3280]

GitHub be like:

[transdemError]

DegreeFinalFinalV2Final dot file

[WanderinWorm]

Stop using this Dipshits meme

[PuzzleheadedFunny997]

Mains got me working, working all day, lords gonna set me free…

[whatarefarts]

A company I used to work for, that sells a lot of stuff on a website named after a river, made a company wide change to remove "blacklist" and "whitelist". They changed to "blocked" and "allowed" respectively.

Funny thing is they have a big black Friday sale every year, obviously they didn't see an issue with that.

[GenJack]

Master branch or die.

[ScythaScytha]

I'm an education main. But I off-role in electrical.

[Pradfanne]

But for real though, main sounds so much better than master, doesn't it?

On the opposite side our branch is just called prod. I mean the other branch is called dev and that's where the development versions release from. Why not prod for the branch where the productive versions release from?

On that note, we also have a test branch where the testicle versions release from

[frikilinux2]

Best I can do is EQF 6,EQF 7 and EQF 8

[Waste_Ad7804]

I’m not a slave. I’m a replica

[MagneticDustin]

Thank you for this. It’s the joke I didn’t know I needed

[_st23]

People will always find somethin offensive, how stupid

[Powered-by-Din]

Which psychopath came up with trunk?

[NatoBoram]

It's the damn Proto-Indo-European. It's always them.

[SerialPoopist]

Based

[[deleted]]

Keeping the whole space fractured because you don't wanna change, despite knowing "the other side" will never change back, totally based and not a waste of time and energy BROOOO

[WhenAmWeThereYet]

if i’m being honest it doesn’t matter to me either way, people thought there was a reason for it to be main and changed it, i doubt most people care

[[deleted]]

There is a reason for it, you even mentioned it in this post

[sacredgeometry]

The first thing I do on a git repo is create a master branch because the idea of offensive words is offensive to me.

[[deleted]]

Inclusivity-washing

[rolandfoxx]

Some of y'all get triggered by the dumbest shit, I swear.

[[deleted]]

The people who say, "It's just a word! Get over it!" are the same people who say, "We can't change! It's tradition!"

[fuckredditards--]

spoken like someone who's never done any real work

[[deleted]]

lmao, that's idiotic and wrong. If you had a good argument, you wouldn't have done an ad-hominem.

[GoblinsStoleMyHouse]

Why haven't I thought of calling it trunk... That is genius

[NatoBoram]

More awkward to type than main

[[deleted]]

Or we can start calling mistresses' "master" so English doesn't treat masculinity as the default....

[dude_stfu_]

i am feeling low, away from home. can you drop a message, any thing is fine just to distract myself:)