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by oap_bram 1919 days ago
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.
1 comments
egwor 1919 days ago
Totally agree with this.

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)

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rvnx 1919 days ago
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.

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dvfjsdhgfv 1919 days ago
> 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.

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garaetjjte 1919 days ago
>main implies that one branch is more important than the others. This could be offending to some.

I can't tell if this is satire or not.

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you_are_naive 1919 days ago
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.
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