Hacker News Reader

Comment by _vbdg | Hacker News Reader

Really? Git doesn't have any actual references to slavery. Even if it did, is everyone now disallowed from using such terminology in a benign manner? I'm not sure calling it "main" makes sense, in any case; anyone who uses git flow knows it's not the "main" branch where most of the day-to-day development takes place. As the article points out, this is a reference to "master" as in a master copy, which is why there's no corresponding reference to slave. If you download the official git book from the website and control-F for "slave", do you know what you'll find? Zero results!

View on HN

"root" might be more appropriate than either "main" or "master".

I suppose that makes more sense than main, but it still begs the question: given that there is no actual slave reference to remove, and discounting the questionable necessity of removing such a reference were one to exist, what's the problem here?

Do you work with people who are experts in things you are not? When one of them raises a concern from the field they're an expert in, you generally must take it as a given that the issue is real and must be addressed, as the expert raised it and wouldn't have otherwise. Your role might be to point out how the presented fixes to the issue might/will cause issues in your field of expertise, but it'd be pretty unprofessional to question the validity of the other expert's designated problem.

Sorry, who exactly is the expert here that shouldn't be questioned? While I generally respect experts' opinions, I also find it reasonable to question them when they don't pass the smell test.

I can respect your smell test if you can respect that it's highly susceptible to Dunning-Kruger and the various mishaps of not knowing what you don't know.

You still didn't tell me who these "experts" are, though it seemed you were referencing several in a prior comment, so I'm unsure how to address that point. I'd of course respect the opinion of an expert, and I'd recognize that I have a very good chance of being wrong, but that makes it even more important to question things. If I'm right, we come to a better conclusion; if I'm wrong, I learn something.

I didn't answer your question because it's rather obvious. Thanks for the downvote though!

HN doesn't permit users to downvote replies to their comments, so you can be sure that wasn't me. Maybe it's obvious to you, but I'm not sure how one qualifies as an expert in the necessity (or not) of removing the word "master" from github branches. Would you please elaborate?

That would be very confusing considering git repos are DAGs, and `master` is normally exactly the opposite of the root node. Look up `git rebase --root`.

"trunk" and "mainline" are the two terms I'm more familiar with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com