This will have broken tens of thousands of beginner programming tutorials. Very unfortunate.
Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
51–60 of 271 posts
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#52Sigh... sad to see the tech community bullied into compliance over a non-issue by political correctness activists. It's not really that big of a deal (and in some ways "main" is better anyway because it's 2 characters shorter), it's just the principle of the thing that bothers me. I would rather see projects and people stand their ground instead of caving to pressure anytime a twitter mob comes along.
I am happy to see this.
You say bullied into compliance but all I see is a community consciously putting efforts to become more inclusive.
It may not be that big of a deal for you but it is a big deal for those who don’t share the same worldview as you. Are your principals so low that you wouldn’t accommodate change of language and behavior to be more welcoming of others?
What do you think about people who curse like a sailors in their personal life but wouldn’t utter an F in office/professional settings - do they have no principals?
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#53If the name change builds a larger, diverse, empathetic community. What have you or I lost?
We haven't lost anything, but we've gained the expectation that we should be accommodating a tiny minority of people being offended for no reason. Sure it's not much work to switch "master" to "main" (although in aggregate it's probably a tonne of person hours), but what happens when the next trend is to be offended at "blacklist", or "sanity check", or any of the other thousands of words that someone is inevitably going to be offended by.
And once the expectation is that you change your language based on the irrationally offended minority, if you refuse to do so because it is a lot of work and makes no sense you become deamonized as some kind of sexist/racist/*ist.
I've seen lots of people claim that if you aren't a part of the minority in question you have no right to say what is or isn't offensive. I strongly disagree, some people are offended for stupid reasons, and we shouldn't feel obligated to accommodate them. Now if a significant portion are offended then there is probably some legitimate reason behind it, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#54What exactly is the rationale behind changing the default branch name? It seems like significant effort is being devoted to this (code changes, fixing broken CI, etc.) but I don't understand why any of it is necessary.
I found this to be a good write up:
https://econoben.github.io/2020/10/20/master-slave-terminolo...
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#55Sigh... sad to see the tech community bullied into compliance over a non-issue by political correctness activists. It's not really that big of a deal (and in some ways "main" is better anyway because it's 2 characters shorter), it's just the principle of the thing that bothers me. I would rather see projects and people stand their ground instead of caving to pressure anytime a twitter mob comes along.
I think, of all the things to come out of BLM, this is one of the easiest to chalk up to “woke culture”.
BUT I still support it 100%.
What if you had to deal with the worst thing that’s ever happened to your people every time you want to push code at work? No, I don’t think anyone’s out there getting upset every commit, any more than they do walking into Thomas Jefferson High School or seeing a confederate flag on a bumper sticker. Rather, it’s just a constant subtle reminder of how ingrained in society racial inequality is, and it must be exhausting.
I think an incredibly minor inconvenience (which can be changed back) is a very fair trade off.
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the grand scheme of slippery slopes this change isn't even at an angle.
I fully agree that this specific change is insignificant, but the biggest deep learning conference has been renamed, after something like 20 years, because of this kind of pressure. Word policing has a bit of a 1984 feel to it. Some desire to control you and how you think by controlling which words you use, with new arbitrary words being banned all the time. Instead of actual change, we're focusing on the superficial…
you're having it both ways in your comment here: if it's only superficial and doesn't actually change anything, then you can safely ignore it. it only matters if it is actually controlling how you think (in which case, it is not superficial and is an actual change)
you can argue that it is the wrong change, or that the end doesn't justify the means, etc, but it doesn't make sense to say that it is both thought control, and superficial
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#57If I say "you are the master of your own destiny", is that offensive, because the word "master" is always offensive? I think that "main branch" sounds fine, it makes as much sense as "master branch", but I'm irked that people are always caving to word policing. Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended? The other day, people at my workplace were…
Not sure I understand the idea of banning words being taken so far. I always interpreted Git’s usage of ‘master’ to mean the original replica. Like the golden master of a record or CD.
Nobody banned anything. They changed a default.
Git was developed to replace Bitkeeper. Git's usage of master probably comes from Bitkeeper's usage of master and slave.
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#58Can we please stop wondering about being politically correct and focus on the real problems of the world? Thanks! I would also like to add the fact that politics or any social matter IMHO should be kept out of software in general. I don't think that any other engineering field has this much drama over some words that have been part of our whole life until now like IT is having.
I think there is a growing awareness in the mainstream that, in fact, everything is political, and that people who thought thing X wasn't previously and are upset that it apparently is now are simply in the early stages of discovering the privilege they've enjoyed in being society's default gender, race, culture, etc:
https://brettclt.medium.com/why-is-everything-political-beca...
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#59Can we please stop wondering about being politically correct and focus on the real problems of the world? Thanks! I would also like to add the fact that politics or any social matter IMHO should be kept out of software in general. I don't think that any other engineering field has this much drama over some words that have been part of our whole life until now like IT is having.
Imagine if instead of master/slave the terms were master and "n-word". Would there be a reasonable argument to change it at that point? If you say "yes" then you agree there is a line somewhere. If that's the case then we should discuss where the line should be and why it should be there instead of saying "stop [worrying] about being politically correct". If you say "no" then your argument is that no words are too of…
Master/slave has a technical meaning beyond the sense of one person enslaving another. "Nigger" has no use case outside of making horrible and offensive remarks, aside from historical writing (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird) or making a point about racism, cases in which it is accepted.
Re: Update to Git changes the default of init.defaultBranch to main
#60If I say "you are the master of your own destiny", is that offensive, because the word "master" is always offensive? I think that "main branch" sounds fine, it makes as much sense as "master branch", but I'm irked that people are always caving to word policing. Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended? The other day, people at my workplace were…
I don’t really get this sentiment. Are you so absolutely dedicated to the phrase “falling on deaf ears” that if somebody says to you “hey, that phrase might hurt somebody’s feelings, can you use an alternative” you take it as some sort of massive imposition on your life? I don’t understand why small changes that can be done in kindness are seen as so inconvenient as to be worth this level of rejection. I’m hearing im…
If “small” change offends me because of my tiny stature would you please consider being more precise and saying “inconsequential” or “trivial” change instead of making a spatial analogy for its magnitude?