Cannot argue with any of the points brought up by the author at all. That being said, "main" is a better name for that branch, especially for people new to VCS. The change would've been worthwhile on its own without the expectation of a standing ovation.
GitHub, fuck your name change
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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#52Wasn't it GitLab actually ?
Otherwise, about the article, it's unfair to say that we need to correct the AI/ML to a more "neutral" perspective.
I'm always worried about artificial "neutrality", as neutrality often ends up just adding more weight to the perspective that you consider more socially and politically acceptable.
In Australia for example, French people have a bad reputation because they tend to steal from shops ("french shopping": https://www.traveller.com.au/french-nickers-cause-a-stink-do... ).
If tomorrow you build software for the shops to identify risks; well, whether you like it or not, it'll target French.
Should we artificially add more examples of non-stealing French in the dataset just because it's socially more acceptable ?
(I took French because it's socially and legally ok to blame French for mistakes of this planet, and I was born there, but replace with whatever suits you)
Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#53I 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…
I know it's anecdotal but I've asked my colleagues the same - in a country with a terrible history of this sort too. And turns out I can't find a single person who agrees with Github's decision.
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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#54Christ, I agree with this article so much it hurts.
I am convinced future people will find this whole saga quite an interesting anecdote of how, for a period of time, _appearing_ to be "anti-racist" was far more important than doing anything positive.
As an aside I find it highly amusing watching the proponents of such changes eat themselves (see Twitch: womxn debacle).
Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#55That's exactly what I think about that topic. Master branch is the master record. Nothing more or less.
Especially since there is no such thing as a slave branch.
Even if there was one, as noted in the article, context people. Context.
Master/Slave nodes and ports are to be found in a lot of hardware.
No one in their right mind ever would think of it in terms of horrible atrocities of the past. It’s a technical term. That’s where it ends.
Humans are a shitty bunch.
Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#56I 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?
That’s my impression too. “Slave” should be replaced with some other more neutral term, but “master” shouldn’t be a problem. There are multiple uses of it in different contexts, but the shared implication is of a definitive source:
Master copy; Remastered (music); Master of Arts/Sciences; Mastery
Etc. None of that implies a master-slave relationship.
Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#57This is a topic I feel cannot be openly discussed on HN (and basically everywhere else), sadly. I switched from Github to Gitlab after this change. Political correctness is a great way to know that a company has the completely wrong focus and will be unable to innovate and create good products.
Sounds like git itself will be changing too -- may as well plan for it and set your new repos to main instead.
Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#58I 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…
Unfortunately I think it is more of a cultural problem than a matter of leadership. The widely used FactoryGirl Ruby gem (the vast majority of Rails setups embed it) was renamed FactoryBot a couple years ago. It's not like my team had a say in this change but overall I was the only one against it but ended up implemented the change, which took about an hour (all our repos + the PRs). Note: technically I was in a situation of harassment.
Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#59> 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. Boom. So I'm indirectly asking a black software engineer by virtue of reading the blog: What are the things that should be done instead? Not a lot we can do it about stop and search. How do we actively bust bias? He slams the 'meritocracy' meme: I know that is widely b…
He answered before you asked,
>Inevitably there will be some of you in the audience asking, “Well what do you want them to do? They’re trying their hardest, help them with some solutions!!”.
>I don’t want this post to be about The Solutions™ but here’s one for your noggin; there is this a significant intersection between career changers/developers coming from non traditional backgrounds (i.e. people with no CS degree) and minorities. Put your money where your fucking mouths are and hire these people. Every summer countless tech companies of all sizes run internship programs, would it be a stretch to run an apprenticeship program of the same length for non traditional applicants?
Re: GitHub, fuck your name change
#60>Every summer countless tech companies of all sizes run internship programs, would it be a stretch to run an apprenticeship program of the same length for non traditional applicants?
Many of the most prestigious tech companies already run internships like this. They’re desperate to hire minorities, frankly.
Similar practices exist in elite universities. If you’re from a minority background, you can expect a significantly higher chance of being admitted, and a significantly lower SAT requirement.
I agree that the change from master to main is dumb, though. “master” has a specific meaning (as it does in “master record”), which “main” does not adequately convey.