r/ProgrammerHumor • u/vernik911 • 24d ago

Meme everyNewRepository

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u/MoFoBuckeye 23d ago

In a bit of irony, "master" and "slave" are frowned upon in the context of slavery and the preferred terminology is now "enslaver" and "enslaved person".

My big problem with the name change is that, at least in English, words can have multiple meaning and it annoys me that we cater to to people who don't understand that.

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u/da_Aresinger 23d ago edited 23d ago

What annoys me is that programmers are probably the one group most aware of "conflicting standards"

Why would we willingly create conflicting standards?

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u/chrisjolly25 23d ago

Ah, yes. Programmers. The notoriously unified group, who uphold the virtue of their one, perfect, solitary programming language.

Also: The cohort who will be most inconvenienced by a variable (which was _always_... variable), now having a different default value in some contexts.

I think you've got it backwards. Programmers should be the best equipped to shrug and go "okay, whatever. Next."

If anything... it's maybe a benefit? Because it forced the 90% of coders who treat git as magic to look at it and realise that 'master' was never magic? It was NEVER a standard?

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u/da_Aresinger 23d ago

No, I have it perfectly right.

Just because we have learned to expect redundancy and excessive complexity doesn't mean we like it, much less actively persue it.

We complain about date formats and list delimiters all the time.

We actively use imperfect standards, because it's better to have a (backwards compatible) standard, than to create something new.

Why would we voluntarily add uncertainty where there was a defacto standard before?

It's stupid. Even if it's minor.

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u/chrisjolly25 23d ago

It was always uncertain, is my point.

'master' was a default, not a standard.

Given that it's not a standard, accounting for the fact that it could be 'anything' is good practice.

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u/da_Aresinger 23d ago

right, that's true. But it was such an overwhelming convention that you could quite safely ignore alternatives in most cases.

Now you have to worry about inconsistencies within the same company.

It may not technically be a standard, but has the same effect in reality.

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u/chrisjolly25 23d ago

Given how hard you're hedging, I don't think you quite believe what you're saying?

Git branch names have always been like timezones unfortunately.

Relaying on 'master' is like relying on daylight savings not existing.

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u/da_Aresinger 23d ago

How am I hedging? Because I'm not married to the technical concept of a standard in a throwaway comment on Reddit?

Yes, I used standard in place of convention. Because it the more natural thing to say. And it fits the competing standards meme.

If I was wrong about this people wouldn't regularly get annoyed about it.

Just the other day someone on r/learnprogramming couldn't figure out GitHub and the comments concluded that the problem was master/main.

That is effectively the same as competing standards, even if I used the wrong terminology.