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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

counterpoint: I'll be pissed off and emotionally triggered, knowing that they bent over backwards just to be "politically correct" or "progressive".

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It's a bit of a paradox isn't it, if you really are emotionally triggered by people making a gesture to black developers, doesn't that suggest that developers are really easily emotionally triggered, and therefore making the gesture is actually important and therefore you shouldn't be triggered because it's not bending over backward to be politically correct it's actually tackling something that's a real issue?

What's the issue in this case? What do I put in my CV in place of "Master's degree" in case it triggers someone?

I wouldn't be listing your git commits on your CV in the first place.

Please just answer the question. I have a degree called "Master's degree". What should I call it now? If it's serious enough to warrant changing everyone's git workflow, surely a small gesture like updating my CV to remove potential trigger words is needed.

If we're really having this conversation here's your answer: the github term master comes from bitkeeper which was specifically using a master/slave idiom. Whereas Master in academia is derived from the Latin Magister which doesn't have the same reference to the master slave dynamic - it's literally just a homonym. So don't change your CV.

I'm sorry but you are mistaken. "Master" in git refers to "record master" which has nothing to do with a master-slave relationship. The master used in git is a homonym, not the same word.

Nope, it's mentioned right here: https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...

Almost, but not quite. At least:

I think you can say "that people are arguing about it makes it significantly political".

I don't think you can say "that people are arguing about it makes it a meaningful thing to do".

Serious question: you're not the only person in this thread who feels this, and I genuinely don't understand it.

Why is this so upsetting?

...because this is slacktivism lite. Rather than addressing actual issues facing african-americans today, we're engaging in silly naming changes that will have zero impact on 99.9% (optimistically) them

...because I don't want to be paying the externalities (workflow changes, having to keep up with the new "correct" naming) caused by a game of "who can be the most woke" between a vocal minority of progressives

Your first bullet is an argument against this change as being suboptimal. That there's a more optimally utilitarian use of the resources, which I get. The thing I don't get about this argument is that nothing Github (or any of us except for some weirdos) does is optimally utilitarian. They have a cartoon mascot! They don't _need_ that. You're not upset that they pay someone to draw Octocat, why be upset about this?

Your second bullet is an argument against this change from the position that it's an unasked for burden. In general, I get that. In the specific context of software engineering, it's a little more surprising. Tools, APIs, interfaces, terminology, etc... are in constant flux. Software has to be actively maintained to be kept functional. Software engineers have to always be learning in order to keep current. A vendor changing something like this is par for the course, right? Why such an extreme reaction?

It's a combination of the two factors. If a group of people want to one up each other by refactoring their side projects to be as woke as possible, that's fine by me. But if they're doing it and causing breakages and/or forcing everyone else to adapt, that's where I draw the line.

>A vendor changing something like this is par for the course, right? Why such an extreme reaction?

I'd be similarly pissed off if an upstream API provider suddenly decided to change all their identifier names for stylistic purposes. eg. the CTO woke up one day and decided that all of their API endpoints should be changed from camel case to snake case.

Then I’m a bit surprised you don’t have more sympathy.

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