I use ‘main’ on git instead of ‘master’ now (forced to change at work) and its shorter and snappier IMO.
But yeah there are more important problems out there.
Comment on If "Master/Slave" terminology in computing sounds bad now, why not change it to "Dom/Sub"?
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I personally think the whole backlash against master/slave in the computing world is people looking for something in their sphere of knowledge to be offended about so they can feel like they are part of “a movement”. Even if some mustache twirling racist was the first “computer guy” to come up with the term and meant it to be offensive, that is not how sane people view it today. So some of the advocates for changing it should stop trying to build it up into some Pizzagate-like conspiracy against black/brown people.
Having said that, I also don’t have any strong attachments to the phrasing either. Phase it out in favor of something that makes everyone happy if that keeps the peace. It is just a term that made sense at the time to describe something. There is nothing stopping us from changing it to something else now if we so choose. It is not erasing heritage or some such nonsense. If anything, people having strong hangups about it if there are better or equally as good terms out there that doesn’t make people uncomfortable is far weirder in my opinion.
The only thing I have somewhat strong opinions about is making it some high priority to go back and erase those terms from solutions that already exist. Change them as you update things, sure, but why create extra work to update something old that is currently working if the only change is not functional and just verbiage. Seems like wasted effort that could be better directed and solving functional issues to me.
Valmond@lemmy.world 2 months ago
d00ery@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The master in master branch is, I’d assume, from the idea of Master copy which refers to the original of something, eg a recording, drawing, etc. www.collinsdictionary.com/…/master-copy
I’m not hugely tied to the word and things change … So meh.
meekah@lemmy.world 2 months ago
While I agree with your assumption, I think main is less vague. Master can be interpreted several ways, including an offensive one. So while I agree with other commenter in that it’s unnecessary to go back and change things retroactively, but just setting the default branch name for new repos in your version control to main is a fair thing to ask IMO.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
including an offensive one.
Is the code going to be offended? If so it’s probably already offended by it’s likely very bad code quality and lack of maintenance and repair.
ultramaven@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
When I start “whipping up” the pull requests, I’ll make sure to “rape” your suggestions
Scrollone@feddit.it 2 months ago
I insist on renaming main to master every time I create a repo on GitLab. Master forever, even if it doesn’t make much sense.
meekah@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That makes no sense whatsoever.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
most things in life make very little sense, have you ever thought about land rights?
Scrollone@feddit.it 2 months ago
It makes sense because “master copy” is the name of the “official” version of something. Nothing to do with slavery by the way.
NostraDavid@programming.dev 2 months ago
I don’t know about Scrollone, but I hate it when corporations force me to change for the sake of change. Options to change is fine (in case someone doesn’t like the default), of course.
And no, “inclusivity” is not the actual reason, as that’s already covered by adding the option to change (which again, is completely fine)
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
So you are not passively working against progress, you are doing it actively.
Scrollone@feddit.it 2 months ago
And I’m proud of it :)
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
So you are not passively working against progress, you are doing it actively.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Welcome to Orwell-ville.
PS: im most amused by those who think the USA incented slavery.
TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The US may not have invented it, but there are still people in the US who are affected by it today.
Americans care about slavery for the same reason that Germans care about Nazis.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 2 months ago
^
Ya know what gets my goat? Right Wing Chuds who ask why white people don’t get credit for ending slavery…
I dunno, why is it that when I point a gun in someone’s face and decide to shoot him in the leg instead, do I not get credit for preventing his murder?
Oh because he’s worse off than he would have been if I had done nothing at all? Because the only reason he was ever in danger of being killed was because of MY actions?
Congratulations, you’ve solved the riddle.
Some white people have generational wealth to fall back on No black people have that because the Klan burnt down black wallstreet.
maniii@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And red-lining districts, and bull-dozing new black towns for highways. etc etc etc
There are so many instances of going around laws just to disadvantage black/coloured people.
Pulling the ladder up after themselves and telling others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Many things were wrong, but language is where people draw the line, like … c’mon. Using slurs I can understand it is uncouth offensive. But master/slave in technical terms ??? NO ONE means the original meanings unless they are also crazy!
awesome_lowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Given the current US prison system and Germany’s stance on Israel, that sentence might mean something very different from what you had in mind
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
slavery is fine as long as it’s legally a mandated form of punishment, gotta love the so called “correctional institutions”
HawlSera@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Nothing’s getting better, we’re just rebranding the terror to sound less horrible
desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
we may not have invented it but we certainly invested in it and probably incested it as well.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
while in some ways I can see your point, I would just have a hard time saying this in a work meeting here in the deep south with black colleagues present
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
most sociologists and some psychologists would refer to this as a subconscious, or subdued form of racism.
it is kind of silly a the end of the day. How a terminology originally referring to a power dynamic. Has been so excessively ingrained in relation to race (which isn’t very historically relevant) such that even using these terms in a generic capacity, not relating to in any form what would constitute this “negative slavery” concept, that it makes people feel uneasy, summarizes rather weirdly, the human condition.
maybe this is just my autism speaking, but i see so little resemblance contextually, and almost zero historical relevance that i see almost no connection between the words and the practices at hand. Like you could do a wikipedia speedrun from technology to slavery, but you could also do that from any topic, to slavery. Everything is so interconnected there is nothing pure anymore.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Isn’t the inverse - “I asked x number of black people and they were OK with it” or even “I assume y% number of black people are ok with it” subject to the same criticism?
I am white so we’re probably getting to the edge of propriety in this conversation.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
yeah they’re both equally susceptible to the same problem. Ultimately though, one of the things we can best do to examine something like this is relate it to other similar concepts/problems. PTSD for example, hearing a certain word or phrase may make you deeply uncomfortable or uneasy. It’s not recommended to simply cope with that, or stop hearing those terms. It’s recommended to learn how to work with and against it, in order to become a more functional human. And you could argue a similar thing in regards to master/slave terminology being used.
You could also expand into the general normalization of a concept. For example curse words are only bad because we deem them to be. If a white guy explains the architecture of a piece of software using master/slave terminology to a group of people which includes black people, specifically in the country of america. It might be weird, but realistically, it probably shouldn’t be. Why? It’s simple, there’s nothing that prevents this from being a presentation from a black person explaining an architecture using a master/slave architecture in the exact same manner as the white guy, to a room of people that includes white people. Is that weird? I see no reason for it to be weird there either.
The entire reason the master/slave terminology is frowned upon is because of the power balance in that specific situation, however if there is no power imbalance, it’s debatable as to whether it matters or not. It’s perfectly fine in the BDSM space even between white/black people because it’s a consented accepted terminology in that specific context. So we could even extend the social acceptableness of it based on who consents to experiencing that dialog.
There are a lot of ways to look at and think about things, ultimately it’s probably worth not thinking all too hard about most things as they don’t lead to much.
I am white so we’re probably getting to the edge of propriety in this conversation.
definitely, but that’s part of the fun, if you can’t discuss things in a philosophical manner whats the point of even asking the question in the first place.
dezmd@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Whitelist and Blacklist is on that stack as well.
ultramaven@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Bro I fucking said “whitelist” in a meeting and got so many glares, fuck all of these fucking uneducated pieces of shit that can only punch down because they know nothing except “DATS RACIST”
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
this is actually a terminology that i would be interested on seeing the historical context for actually. My assumption has always been light based “whitelist referring to a well lit room, where as blacklist refers to a completely dark room” making things easy/hard to find as a a result.
It could also literally just be a coincidence and it simply sounded better for the allow list to be whitelisted, and the deny list to be blacklisted, humans have weird connections to words like that.
ultramaven@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Fucking thermodynamics is racist guys
Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
For most people it’s a lot more simple and subconscious than that. White=positive, black=negative. Most people do not consciously apply this to race, but they don’t have to for the subconscious association to take root.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
If I had to guess, it’s just the general “white=good black=bad” which itself is likely related to day/night.
But it’s easy to imagine a bouncer at a club with a list of whites allowed in and blacks that aren’t. I don’t think that’s the etymology, but it’s also important to remember that language is alive and words can take on unintended meaning.
InverseParallax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 months ago
people looking for something in their sphere of knowledge to be offended about so they can feel like they are part of “a movement”
I always thought it was just people looking for something in their sphere of influence that they could do to make a difference, no matter how small.
The computing world is known for being hostile toward most out-groups, and I’ll welcome any effort to change that, no matter how small and how silly it seems. The real change needs to be in the people but perhaps being cognizant of such details will help remind us all to be more open and welcoming
Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t have issues with the original terminology either, and wouldn’t really care if it was changed. But if it were changed to Dom/Sun then it would reinforce the meme of the stockings wearing femboy programmer. XD