To me when people are so angered that they can't separate contexts of language use, it's a signal or canary that things are out of control. And then reasonable people fold to requested or demanded change, like giving into a child rewarding them for something not reasonable, re-enforcing the illogical thought behaviour - doing it because it's easier to make satisfy a few angry, unreasonable people (perhaps a mob) who are associating language that has nothing to do with people in the context being used that they're changing.
Coddling will only lead to greater problems later, though yes, it certainly is a gesture showing respect — because of the improper associating, trigger it is causing an unreasonable mob. Coddling people makes them and society weaker, it doesn't strengthen them - it turns their anger into something other than critical thinking. Large for-profit corporations who are happy to jump to an easy decision like this seem to be more opportunists than leaders to make a statement like you said in response.
Political parties do the same, I can't remember what that's called though.
Until you mentioned it, I didn't even realise this was a PC thing.
I'm all for improving the rights of minorities, but this behavior of eradicating all trace of references to anything tentatively related to historical racism seems like useless noise at best and dangerously naive at worst...
If our society becomes so sensitive that we cannot even utter a word that implies another word which when placed in an entirely different context and the assumption of malicious intent becomes racist then we are doomed to repeat history as a species - i.e unchecked, this pattern of behavior can only evolve into censorship which is itself detrimental to future generations understanding racism in our history.
Given how even distributed systems used to use master/slave frequently, and some still do, and that people don't say "master branch" and typically just say "master", I think it would be surprising for someone to avoid that association if they are educated in computer sincere using those terms (which again many places do).
Also, it's not reading comprehension, it's subconscious level associations that people basically can't avoid.
Git init defaults to master, i don't care what it's called but why are they diverging from git defaults?
This will just add yet another inconsistency to confuse newbies as they transition from using github directly to plain git cli... The more cynical side of me would think that may even be intentional.
When will all this political correctness and social justice warrior nonsense stop? Just because a word can be used in a way that causes offense, doesn't mean that it's always used that way. Also, people need to relax a bit and not hunt down things that could potentially offend so aggressively. Take it easy, if something offensive was intended you'll probably know from the surrounding context - stop shooting down individual words.
It won't stop until companies start refusing to hire leftist activists, or take investment from them, and fire the ones that do sneak through the hiring process.
A lot of this bullying evaporates when there's some risk involved in doing it, but that doesn't happen because companies are filled with people that have no strong moral foundation to their lives. So they aren't really sure if they're good people and easily pushed around by anyone who comes along and says with conviction and clarity, "you are a good person if you do X and a terrible bad evil person if you don't".
"Master," in many contexts, need not be associated with slavery. You can be a (grand)master at chess without having any slaves. You can have a master's degree without having any slaves. In the case of git, I don't think there is a clear connection to slavery either (the non-master branches are typically referred to as feature or development branches). So unless chess grandmasters and master's degrees are going to also change names, I don't see why git needs to.
Is this related to master-slave? Master-slave in programming has nothing to do with humans, the contexts are separate. What's it say about society if people are unable to differentiate, separate the language in two contexts?
Not enough. Master branch should be deleted outright. Then go in and pattern match the word "slave" in people's code and delete that as well (including all prior revisions). Only then will systemic racism be fully abolished. /s
At the speed this is going, I'm beginning to worry about my master's degree, male/female connectors, and color coding in electrical code.
Why? You were always free to delete or rename the master branch. There are enough repositories which don't have a master branch.
Unlike SVN (trunk), in git "master" really has no value to the VCS.
I also assume this will be for new repositories, so Github won't break builds by changing existing repositories - because that would indeed mess up a lot.
I have no problem with folks doing this but it feels like hollow, performative grandstanding that allows tech folk to feel like they’re helping without doing anything that will make them truly uncomfortable. How many companies will do this but continue to let talent pipeline issues languish, or neglect unconscious biases create an uneven playing field for employees?
I'd say "blacklist" and "whitelist" are more offensive / have a stronger argument of colour being used to discriminate (albeit not directly related to races) / would be better to have "deny list" and "allow list".
"Race condition" is just as offensive as "Master Branch" - neither are relating to prejudice / historic injustice; but use different meanings of these potentially loaded words.
That said, nothing against switching to non-loaded terms; especially if the effort to do so is less than the effort to debate it. But we mustn't accuse people of being racist just because they're using terminology that some are offended by when those using the terminology are simply using terminology they've learnt, and could have no reasonable expectation to have considered that it may be deemed offsensive.
'main' doesn't seem like a good solution if this is really what they're going to do. it might just be me but a 'master' branch in some repos might not be equal to what you could consider a 'main' branch.
I’d like to see the Venn diagram of (people who are complaining about renaming ‘master’ to ‘main’) and (people who complain about misspelling ‘lose’ as ‘loose’, “it’s” as “its”, etc).
I don’t have a fully-formed idea of what I’m getting at yet, but I suspect that the overlap is high, and it seems inconsistent. Like for “master”, especially when coupled with “slave”, the expectation is that the context of its usage in computing makes it clear that this has nothing to do with humans claiming to own other humans. But use “loose” where “lose” is the right word, and you’re gonna get a snide or “helpful” response about the misspelling, even though the context makes it perfectly clear what the intended meaning was in the vast majority of cases.
I’d like to see a Venn diagram of (people claiming the word master can offend someone) and (people actually offended by the word master). I suspect the overlap is nonexistent.
[+] [-] firloop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonzini|5 years ago|reply
(I know bitkeeper used master/slave terminology for repositories; that is completely irrelevant to git).
[+] [-] loceng|5 years ago|reply
Coddling will only lead to greater problems later, though yes, it certainly is a gesture showing respect — because of the improper associating, trigger it is causing an unreasonable mob. Coddling people makes them and society weaker, it doesn't strengthen them - it turns their anger into something other than critical thinking. Large for-profit corporations who are happy to jump to an easy decision like this seem to be more opportunists than leaders to make a statement like you said in response.
Political parties do the same, I can't remember what that's called though.
[+] [-] tomxor|5 years ago|reply
I'm all for improving the rights of minorities, but this behavior of eradicating all trace of references to anything tentatively related to historical racism seems like useless noise at best and dangerously naive at worst...
If our society becomes so sensitive that we cannot even utter a word that implies another word which when placed in an entirely different context and the assumption of malicious intent becomes racist then we are doomed to repeat history as a species - i.e unchecked, this pattern of behavior can only evolve into censorship which is itself detrimental to future generations understanding racism in our history.
[+] [-] adjkant|5 years ago|reply
Also, it's not reading comprehension, it's subconscious level associations that people basically can't avoid.
[+] [-] hn_is_toxic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filoeleven|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomxor|5 years ago|reply
This will just add yet another inconsistency to confuse newbies as they transition from using github directly to plain git cli... The more cynical side of me would think that may even be intentional.
[+] [-] gear54rus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjuhl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thu2111|5 years ago|reply
A lot of this bullying evaporates when there's some risk involved in doing it, but that doesn't happen because companies are filled with people that have no strong moral foundation to their lives. So they aren't really sure if they're good people and easily pushed around by anyone who comes along and says with conviction and clarity, "you are a good person if you do X and a terrible bad evil person if you don't".
[+] [-] cczizou|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PureParadigm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] holler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonzini|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0zg|5 years ago|reply
At the speed this is going, I'm beginning to worry about my master's degree, male/female connectors, and color coding in electrical code.
[+] [-] _v885|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VWWHFSfQ|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebazzz|5 years ago|reply
Unlike SVN (trunk), in git "master" really has no value to the VCS.
I also assume this will be for new repositories, so Github won't break builds by changing existing repositories - because that would indeed mess up a lot.
[+] [-] akerro|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exogen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slap|5 years ago|reply
The virtue signalling can't stop right now.
[+] [-] beager|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnlbevan2|5 years ago|reply
"Race condition" is just as offensive as "Master Branch" - neither are relating to prejudice / historic injustice; but use different meanings of these potentially loaded words.
That said, nothing against switching to non-loaded terms; especially if the effort to do so is less than the effort to debate it. But we mustn't accuse people of being racist just because they're using terminology that some are offended by when those using the terminology are simply using terminology they've learnt, and could have no reasonable expectation to have considered that it may be deemed offsensive.
[+] [-] adjkant|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aayala|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vulcan01|5 years ago|reply
Yay.
[+] [-] Jonnax|5 years ago|reply
Like I know some projects set their default branch as develop.
Also the set upstream command, that let's you have a local branch name different from remote, right?
[+] [-] jjuhl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] beirut_bootleg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smegmasamurai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filoeleven|5 years ago|reply
I don’t have a fully-formed idea of what I’m getting at yet, but I suspect that the overlap is high, and it seems inconsistent. Like for “master”, especially when coupled with “slave”, the expectation is that the context of its usage in computing makes it clear that this has nothing to do with humans claiming to own other humans. But use “loose” where “lose” is the right word, and you’re gonna get a snide or “helpful” response about the misspelling, even though the context makes it perfectly clear what the intended meaning was in the vast majority of cases.
[+] [-] andrenth|5 years ago|reply