2y ago

Linus be like...

23 comments

master (n): an original from which copies can be made
- Context is pretty important when it comes to words with multiple definitions. I find it hard to interpret the "master branch" as anything but this definition. Now if you're talking about PATA hard drives, I can understand updating the standard terminology there.
  
  yeah we might know what a 'slave drive' is but it sure sounds sketchy lol
- Thats not the only definition though. It's clearly the intended one, but it's possible to make someone think of other definitions when a word pops up.
  And it's not too hard to go "Oh, I get why alternate definitions might make people uncomfortable, even if I have no issue with it." And if you can see why someone might be uncomfortable in a situation, and it's zero effort to avoid that situation... why not?
  Unless you're intentionally trying to not understand, or lack empathy and genuinely can't understand why words with alternate definitions heavily linked to slavery might make people uncomfortable, it feels pretty self explanatory.
  I'll give Linus a pass, because linux kernel is probably the most widely accessed repo out there, and changing defaults and standards can have an actual impact on third party tooling.
  
  And it’s not too hard to go “Oh, I get why alternate definitions might make people uncomfortable, even if I have no issue with it.”
  If you accept the opinion of people that take your words out of context in order to get offended, somebody somewhere will have a problem with every word you can pick in a dictionary to use.
  It's a power play. The people insisting on the change want to exploit the people doing things so that they gain some perceived or real reward. Stop supporting this.
  
  and it's zero effort to avoid that situation
  It usually isn't, though. Going against a standard causes extra work. If it's an existing project that already used that "bad word" then you're proposing a major piece of work to change things around, likely breaking a ton of stuff in the process.
  
  I genuinely can’t understand why words with alternate definitions linked to slavery might make people uncomfortable. It unintentionally reminds you bad things in history, and? Should we stop using words like "Nazi" or "War" too? Can we all stop using "death" while we're at it? It reminds me the mortal nature of human
  
  The meaning is exceedingly clear. Mindless actions ignoring context completely miss the entire point of the exercise, serving only to waste people's time with virtue signaling.
  I in no way oppose changing the standard from "master" to "main" for new repositories, but going back and trying to change things with unknown dependencies is just going to cause more problems than it solves.

Me making all my master branches explicitly master because I have a bdsm kink and I can't believe they wanna take my master branches away from me.

 undefined

    
[init]
defaultBranch = chaos

I just got annoyed yesterday when git made the default branch master and had to fiddle to push to githubs main
- You had this problem probably because you created your repo with the GitHub web UI?
  I always create the local repo first with git init, make at least 1 commit, and then gh repo create. And yes, my default branch would be master but why should I care if I offend some Americans.

23 comments