Anyone who believes that "master" is some kind of slur and takes the opportunity to take offense over it is not someone you want causing problems in your organization.
I dont know, I was taught from a very young age to be nice. And honestly, I kinda of kept it as a close part of my personality to not make anyone feel uncomfortable for any reason. Although I can argue most of these things from a political angle, I also feel like "making people feel more welcome" is a goal in and of itself, and therefor can't be overlooked.
Honestly, I feel like if you would have a problem with a particular community you would like to have it resolved too right? I just don't think that it's ever been about terminology because you never had to feel uncomfortable because of it. That's not bad however, but it's easy to forget that if you don't relate to someone subjective reality, doesn't mean it's any less real.
If someone still struggles to get behind it, think of the few chars that will be shorter to type and also think how it is much easier to compare the branch concept a real tree, and talk about the main branch. Maybe they could have gone for trunk? (If you care so much about main vs trunk, then choose whatever makes you happy)
It's very smart.
Trunk is a better term than "main" and reflects very well the logic with the tree and historical naming (including CVS, SVN, and the trunk software itself).
main implies that one branch is more important than the others.
This could be offending to some.
> main implies that one branch is more important than the others. This could be offending to some.
What if one branch is actually more important than others? What about weighted graphs? Stochastic dominance? You can't blindly project social concepts on math/computing science, it's a blind alley.
It's HN so it may not be. In Japan, main family is the superior family while branch families are treated as lower class. This imperial system is still very much prevalent and map to skin too.
“I am personally not offended by this, therefore anyone that is offended is a problem to be removed”
People have different life experiences and backgrounds. The cost to you of renaming is near zero, if you’re the one loudly opposing something that makes your coworkers more comfortable then you’re the one causing problems in the organisation.
I have yet to hear of anyone being actually offended by this.
> The cost to you of renaming is near zero
Not true. I just had to update a load of tests for a git client I'm working on that assume the default branch name is `master` (I wrote them before this mess), and now I have to configure Git on every system I use to use a default name of master. It's not a huge pain, sure, but it isn't nothing and I don't get any benefit from it either.
Sounds like a flaw in your git client. It was always possible to change the default branch name, so hardcoding master was never right. You’re far from alone in making that assumption though! The good news is this makes everyone’s git tools more resilient.
> It’s not a huge pain, sure, but it isn’t nothing and I don’t get any benefit from it either
The entire notion here is accommodating people. It doesn’t benefit you personally but it does benefit others. And it’s not a huge pain. At a certain point we’re expending more energy debating doing this than if everyone just did it and moved on with their lives.
It wasn't in the client, it was in the tests. You know like, here's a script that makes a test repo:
git init
git add foo.txt
git commit -m "A"
git switch -c develop
git add bar.txt
git commit -m "B"
git merge master # This will break soon.
> The entire notion here is accommodating people.
Is it though? It seems to me like the notion is appearing to accommodate people. I still haven't seen a single person say "my great grandfather was a slave and this offends me", only people saying "this might offend someone".
> I still haven't seen a single person say "my great grandfather was a slave and this offends me", only people saying "this might offend someone".
In today's world, it's enough for many companies. Si vis pacem, para bellum. You don't want to passively wait until you're attacked, you need to prepare the defenses first so your enemies don't even have a ground to stand.
If you strip away all the political outrage what’s actually happening on a technical level is that git is adding a new feature: customisable default branches. I imagine they will provide an option to use it (“git checkout —-default” or whatever) and yes, you’ll have to update your tests to accommodate it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to tweak code because of an external API change that doesn’t benefit me personally. Often it involves using an entire new API because the old one is being retired! Compared to that this is a walk in the park. A couple of hours at most. And yet everyone is expending hours upon hours arguing about it.
Right but people are arguing about it because it is unnecessary! I bet if an API you use broke backwards compatibility just so it could `color` to `colour` you'd be arguing against it too!
We all know exactly the kind of people driving this change. We've worked with them. We know how they function on teams and in the office. We know they aren't particularly good at what they do, barring a few exceptions. And we know what they will do to us, to our jobs, and to our companies if we don't bow to their demands.
I don't know, seems like a very weird subjective reality you're trying to push in an objective one. I am one of those people, yet I haven't had any significant problems with my work ethic.
Pushing a narrative that these people are "gonna do something to us" is a weird one to push. What's gonna happen? We're gonna be kinder to one another? We would want to make people around us happy in a profoundly human way rather than a shallow one?
Just to follow you along in your way of thinking. What are "we" gonna do to your job and your companies? I honestly fail to see what you mean.
Claiming without evidence that African Americans are offended (not to mention it is patronizing to them) by a term like "master" is subjective reality.
If an employer or coworker doesn’t agree to whatever is your latest demand, “you” would start a campaign to get them fired or contact their customers to try to lose them business. Happens regularly.
I mean, that would imply you would prefer a term that is in a way discriminatory to a particular group right? Not in bad faith, but it seems you kind off admitted that there is some evil in doing so, and that you're willing to do it.
Also, I wouldn't do that. Emancipating an actual workforce or colleagues would be my solution, not making the company suffer under it.
Honestly, I feel like if you would have a problem with a particular community you would like to have it resolved too right? I just don't think that it's ever been about terminology because you never had to feel uncomfortable because of it. That's not bad however, but it's easy to forget that if you don't relate to someone subjective reality, doesn't mean it's any less real.