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by 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)

1 comments

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.

>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.

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.