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GitHub, fuck your name change

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#371

Post by mythz »

themgt wrote: post #249
mythz wrote: post #186

Well 'main' is a more intuitive & UX friendly name than 'master' which new devs are going to intuitively relate to as it's commonly used to refer to the 'main thing', e.g. main road, main course, etc. I can't recall the last time I used 'Master' as a synonym to 'main' outside of technology (as a Redis Client author I still deal with Master nomenclature a bit). Can only think of 'Masters degree' but that has to do wit…

I disagree. "Master" is a pre-existing term closer to the actual meaning of that branch in a repository the way most developers work. Cambridge https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/maste... : an original version of something from which copies can be made Merriam Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master : being a device or mechanism that controls the operation of another mechanism or…

Yes "Master copy" was the terminology it was based on, but I'm more likely to hear and use "Original version" or "Original copy" today. I associate "Master copy" or to refer to old artifacts like Vinyl LPs, Film reel or document, with it's usage becoming more rare with the move to a digitized world. So I see its relevance & usage declining, esp. in Software where it's being proactively avoided in new technology.

But I don't believe "Master" is more intuitive nomenclature for new devs learning version control either nor a better representation for the naming the main branch where terminology is around a tree with branches being created from and committed to the 'main' single branch (i.e. trunk). When visualizing branches in a commit history it's shown and referred to as branches off the main trunk that deviates from the main branch at different commit points that may or may not return to the main branch like small roads off a main highway. The emphasis of branches being they're deviations or snapshots of a main branch's commit timeline, not in their state in which they're old copies of a main branch. The "Master copy" by definition does not change, it's a completed artwork, which is the opposite in CVS where it's always growing & changing with a tree of commits and often it's the branches which are snapshots of the main branch in labelled, well-defined points in its history.

Either way the terminology is definitely moving away usage of 'master' in new Software, so I don't fault their reasoning for deprecating existing naming and moving to more modern, intuitive & inclusive terminology.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#372

Post by danso »

> I just don’t appreciate the idea that we as software engineers can now sit back and believe we’ve made some kind of positive change, coz we haven’t

Why does the author think that GitHub — and the people who support the naming change — think of this as “real” change and are complacent to leave it at that?

As opposed to, say, the name change initiative being both a small thing and one that is a natural outgrowth of the mindset already committed to making positive change?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#374

Post by eythian »

Roark66 wrote: post #198
qwerty456127 wrote: post #11

I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word but I can see nothing wrong in "master". Not a single moment in my life I thought about slavery when hearing/seeing the word "master". Should we also rename master degrees perhaps?

>I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word I disagree, however I'm not a native English speaker. It is the most descriptive single word describing this mode of working. We can't ban master/slave as a word or we will loose understanding of what it means. Another poster already mentioned that there are actual human slaves in existence today. I once heard in our time there are more human slaves than ever (mos…

> It is the most descriptive single word describing this mode of working.

It often isn't. It's not uncommon that "replica" or "secondary" actually make more sense.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#375

Post by Grustaf »

sunaurus wrote: post #4

I feel like this topic has been discussed a lot already, but I think it's important to keep pushing back against useless wasted man-hours like this effort is. I live in a country that was almost entirely enslaved by foreigners for ~700 years. I've discussed this rename with dozens of engineers in my country. Without exception, every single one of them thinks it's completely ridiculous. We need to keep voicing these t…

In many cases it's more than ridiculous, it s completely non-sensical. What is the logic behind removing the word "master" even supposed to be?

The problem with slavery is not that there is a word for it, it's that it exists, and used to be very common. By using the word "master" we are not condoning slavery, nobody can believe that. Just like we are not condoning domestic violence by using the word "hit" in "hit song".

For the word blacklist I can see how misguided people could make a case, since the word black is used for something negative. Still ridiculous of course.

Another absurd example: In my project they decided to change the name of a "blackout tool". There is nothing negative about this tool, it doesn't make things worse, it just colours them black.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#376

Post by misnome »

jholman wrote: post #131
jpm48 wrote: post #24

This explains my WTF moment when teaching a class full of students to push to the github classroom using push -u origin master and it being rejected and having to use main!

Yeah. For my own projects, and/or on my own command-line, I don't care what "ma " resolves to. "main" is not a terrible choice. But as a teacher, the way this makes all the existing guides and tutorials wrong means I have to waste 15 minutes of my semester (about 1%) explaining this. In short, the main effect of this change is to very slightly raise the barrier to entry for new developers.

On the other hand, for the non/new developers I’ve interacted with [non-US], “master” was a confusingly jargonistic name that has raised eyebrows for years. Being the “main” branch seems a much plainer, obvious name, and I think it’s an improvement entirely separate from any social reasons.

Is it an empty gesture? Maybe? Does it cost more than a couple of seconds for making things clearer and making a minority of people people happy? No.

It probably wasted more integrated time across all the people reading this article than just shrugging and changing it does.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#377

Post by twic »

user-the-name wrote: post #117
gspr wrote: post #81

There are parts of this article I agree with, and parts I disagree with, but this part just screaaaaams "I cannot possibly picture that any part of the world is in any way different from the US": > “Meritocracy!”, I hear you cry. “They pick from the most talented students. The ones that worked the hardest to get into the most elite schools. The black students should have just worked harder”. I guess mummy and daddy p…

The writer is not from the US.

Then that is a really weird passage. HBCUs are a purely American thing. Legacy admissions are a purely American thing. Paying to get your kids into a university is a purely American thing.

Also, the author uses the American spelling "curb". If they do live in London, they are presumably a migrant from the US.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#378

Post by secondcoming »

KaiserPro wrote: post #202
neronero wrote: post #158

EDIT: For comparison: * "Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers" (5hrs ago, 110 points, 30 comments) -> rank 2 * this post (2hrs ago, 1000 points, 500 comments) -> rank 20 Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks commenting and up voting? (/s) ----- Amazingly well written. I'm going to say some things. You'd guess wrongly if you infer that I'm bitter - since I'm personally very lucky. Having been b…

indeed, the thing that struck me was how much of a middle class sausage factory SV-tech is. I had worked in VFX/media for a long time, and we at least knew that we were mostly rich middle class fops. Having heard all the noise about how upset the tech bros were when diversity increased at FAANG, when I got here I expected to have some, well diversity. I went from a team that had 8/30 female-male, which the company fe…

So you're male working in tech complaining about males working in tech?

Did you step aside to make way for a female hire?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#379

Post by kspacewalk2 »

>This shit aint for us, it never was.

Or, as another article I read this week put it,

>It seems to me that progressive elites, despite their pieties, don’t really want to live in a more equal society. They prefer the imperfect meritocracy we live under—the rule of the smart, the talented and the rich, most of whom traffic in the fiction that their status was earned.

>Still, progressives see themselves as compassionate. What they needed was a way to explain the inequality found in the meritocratic system they hold dear, a way that made them feel they were still on the side of the good without having to disrupt what is good for them. Moral panic around race has been the answer, taking the uneasiness a meritocratic elite must at least unconsciously feel around their economic good fortune—something they could easily share with the less fortunate, should they care to—and displacing it onto “whiteness,” an immutable characteristic that one can do nothing to change.

>In other words, critical race theory is the perfect ideology for affluent progressive whites who want nothing to change—but who still want to feel like the heroes of a story about social justice.

[0] https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-warped-vision-of-anti...

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#380

Post by lucian1900 »

otikik wrote: post #250
vmception wrote: post #47

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

> the American “left” I like that you quote it there. I don't understand why aren't there more real left (no quotes) organizations or parties gaining traction in the US. It seems as if it should have happened "naturally" one or two generations ago.

Propaganda and the dominant ideology, I think.

Although there’s still the CPUSA, PSL and even the DSA.

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