The best reasoning I saw for this change was for clarity for non native English speakers. If you’re learning the language “allowlist” is definitely more clear in meaning than “whitelist”
A lot of companies seem to be doing this, personally I think trying to make a connection between race and tech is a bit far fetched. Nobody thinks of race when talking about whitelists and blacklists…
In public repos where these changes are merged in to FOSS projects, they get little resistance too - although I could see concern of a potential backlash if anyone questioned the alleged benefit of such a change.
Imagine if this approach was taken with the (now outdated) IDE interface? Instead of “Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave”, there’d maybe be “Primary Primary, Primary Secondary, Secondary Primary, Secondary Secondary” 😵
My company has recently started disallowing these words in code. The funny part though is the first few lines of the Jenkins job responsible for checking this stuff proudly states “Waiting for slave node to start checks.”
I know it’s a minor fix in the jenkinsfile but I chuckle every time I see it.
In the wider context of computing and technology, “master” has historically often been paired with “slave” as well, such as old IDE hard drives that had to be switched from master to slave depending on which cable they were plugged into on which port of the motherboard. I realise that’s a bit of an odd example, but there are numerous ones.
Anyway, while I don’t think many people have ever used a branch name of slave, it’s entirely feasible to argue that any branch that isn’t master is in some way subservient to it as opposed to the master branch being the most experienced. The point isn’t to debate that the way you view it is incorrect, your view is entirely reasonable and rational but in order to be inclusive we should take all other views into account and in a very simple way, rather than debate the meaning of the word master in this specific context and telling people that they’re “wrong” for feeling a certain way about it, it’s easy to change the word and thanks to the excellent design of git, there isn’t really any downsides to it.
Because the terminology is Master and Slave. That’s been device terminology for half a century, and has been phased out over the last decade. It’s silly to complain that they would change it.
I now say Primary and Secondary for device terminology, and Main, Stage, and Dev for branch terminology. It doesn’t impact my daily life enough to be mad they don’t keep Master/Slave terminology.
I do think dropping master is absurd, since it in no way implies slavery or any such thing. mastermostly has uses that are entirely inoffensive, unless post-graduate degrees are racist, for example.
But I do think there is some merit in moving off the idea of white is good and black is bad. There are some good arguments that we shouldn’t bestow magic powers upon words, but there is also a lot of merit in the idea that these words affect our perception in negative ways and there is really nothing lost by shifting to equally good alternatives.
If the terms were reversed, you might think differently! We’re not always aware of our own bias, but we can strive to examine how we think about things instead of making snap judgements
Maybe it’s my culture. I think of master as the “master of kung-fu/art/sword/”. Something or someone that have earned respect and is at the core of it’s field.
Yes, I entirely agree. A masterpiece, or mastering an art, or more relevant to software branches: master tapes. None of these imply any sort of subjugation etc…
But… that’s just about the word “master”. I do think there are other terms that it’s a good idea to migrate away from.
Because the terminology is Master and Slave. That’s been a device terminology for half a century. It’s silly to complain that they would change it.
I now say Primary and Secondary for device terminology, and Main, Stage, and Dev for branch terminology. It doesn’t impact my daily life enough to be mad they don’t keep Master/Slave terminology.
Yeah it’s so funny to feel the need to have a “hot take” on branch naming. It’s like if Joe from my team asked me to file some papers under the green folder rather than the red. I’d be like say no more Joe, green folder it is. I don’t care but if somebody cares then they have their say. How do internet people even function in group with other people, with the constant contrarian attitude they carry around?
Yes, it started from this terminology change at Twitter in 2020. They’re the reason that version control systems call the primary branch ‘main’ instead of ‘master’ by default, because ‘master’ comes from the master/slave terminology that is used in electronics hardware design.
There’s a comment here saying that master/slave in hardware design is being replaced by primary/secondary because of the software trend, which I think is stupid. Master/slave works much better in that context because the master device controls the slave device. Primary/secondary implies that the slave device is a fallback of the master device.
I don’t think so. Speaking from help desk, whitelist/blacklist is apparently a confusing concept for anyone that’s never heard of them before. I end up calling them allow list and block list just so to avoid ascertaining, yes, blacklist means blocked, it’s already on there, you can stop trying to re-add it.
Not the main point, but this is the first time I’ve seen “allowlisted”. Lol
…are they trying to avoid saying whitelisted because of the word “white”?
Yeah, at my company we switched to allow/block listed last year. Whitelisted and blacklisted are verboten
The best reasoning I saw for this change was for clarity for non native English speakers. If you’re learning the language “allowlist” is definitely more clear in meaning than “whitelist”
Not really, at least in Spanish we’ve always said “listas blancas/listas negras”.
I don’t know what you are talking about.
Even if our dialects (Mexican) didn’t have vestigial racism and fake dichotomies, permitir y bloquear is as straight forward as you can get.
IT switched from white/black literally years ago, if your department didn’t, you are quite stuck in time.
In Spanish you have https://eslemmy.es/
Sure… But unless you know what either of those terms means, it’s just gibberish like ping.
Glad fizzbuzz doesn’t fit into the gibberish category
A lot of companies seem to be doing this, personally I think trying to make a connection between race and tech is a bit far fetched. Nobody thinks of race when talking about whitelists and blacklists…
In public repos where these changes are merged in to FOSS projects, they get little resistance too - although I could see concern of a potential backlash if anyone questioned the alleged benefit of such a change.
Imagine if this approach was taken with the (now outdated) IDE interface? Instead of “Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave”, there’d maybe be “Primary Primary, Primary Secondary, Secondary Primary, Secondary Secondary” 😵
kill all children
Oh yes the reason task manager ends tasks instead of killing now
Oh yes the reason task manager ends tasks instead of killing now
Hasn’t Kubernetes already replaced master-slave with master/manager-worker? Seems like there are plenty of alternatives.
That does sound like a very sensible alternative given the context
Manager-worker seems classist and problematic /s
My company has recently started disallowing these words in code. The funny part though is the first few lines of the Jenkins job responsible for checking this stuff proudly states “Waiting for slave node to start checks.”
I know it’s a minor fix in the jenkinsfile but I chuckle every time I see it.
Just like “master” in git. WTH is wrong with it. I feed “master” as “the master of kung-fu” is much better then “main”.
In the wider context of computing and technology, “master” has historically often been paired with “slave” as well, such as old IDE hard drives that had to be switched from master to slave depending on which cable they were plugged into on which port of the motherboard. I realise that’s a bit of an odd example, but there are numerous ones.
Anyway, while I don’t think many people have ever used a branch name of
slave, it’s entirely feasible to argue that any branch that isn’tmasteris in some way subservient to it as opposed to themasterbranch being the most experienced. The point isn’t to debate that the way you view it is incorrect, your view is entirely reasonable and rational but in order to be inclusive we should take all other views into account and in a very simple way, rather than debate the meaning of the wordmasterin this specific context and telling people that they’re “wrong” for feeling a certain way about it, it’s easy to change the word and thanks to the excellent design of git, there isn’t really any downsides to it.Because the terminology is Master and Slave. That’s been device terminology for half a century, and has been phased out over the last decade. It’s silly to complain that they would change it.
I now say Primary and Secondary for device terminology, and Main, Stage, and Dev for branch terminology. It doesn’t impact my daily life enough to be mad they don’t keep Master/Slave terminology.
I do think dropping
masteris absurd, since it in no way implies slavery or any such thing.mastermostly has uses that are entirely inoffensive, unless post-graduate degrees are racist, for example.But I do think there is some merit in moving off the idea of white is good and black is bad. There are some good arguments that we shouldn’t bestow magic powers upon words, but there is also a lot of merit in the idea that these words affect our perception in negative ways and there is really nothing lost by shifting to equally good alternatives.
The idea of “black list” has nothing to do with black people, to my understending
It does to people who are absolutely obsessed with race and see it everywhere they look.
If the terms were reversed, you might think differently! We’re not always aware of our own bias, but we can strive to examine how we think about things instead of making snap judgements
That’s not the issue. The issue is inherently seeing white as meaning good and black as meaning bad.
This has absolutely nothing to do with racial features.
I don’t think you understand the pervasiveness of racial animosity.
Maybe it’s my culture. I think of
masteras the “master of kung-fu/art/sword/”. Something or someone that have earned respect and is at the core of it’s field.Yes, I entirely agree. A masterpiece, or mastering an art, or more relevant to software branches: master tapes. None of these imply any sort of subjugation etc…
But… that’s just about the word “master”. I do think there are other terms that it’s a good idea to migrate away from.
this gave me a good laugh
The “slave” part was always weird to me, so I’m fine moving to “main” over “master.”
Because the terminology is Master and Slave. That’s been a device terminology for half a century. It’s silly to complain that they would change it.
I now say Primary and Secondary for device terminology, and Main, Stage, and Dev for branch terminology. It doesn’t impact my daily life enough to be mad they don’t keep Master/Slave terminology.
If “master” unintentionally made some people uncomfortable then there’s no harm in changing the default, since you can modify it if you choose.
Yeah it’s so funny to feel the need to have a “hot take” on branch naming. It’s like if Joe from my team asked me to file some papers under the green folder rather than the red. I’d be like say no more Joe, green folder it is. I don’t care but if somebody cares then they have their say. How do internet people even function in group with other people, with the constant contrarian attitude they carry around?
Yes, it started from this terminology change at Twitter in 2020. They’re the reason that version control systems call the primary branch ‘main’ instead of ‘master’ by default, because ‘master’ comes from the master/slave terminology that is used in electronics hardware design.
There’s a comment here saying that master/slave in hardware design is being replaced by primary/secondary because of the software trend, which I think is stupid. Master/slave works much better in that context because the master device controls the slave device. Primary/secondary implies that the slave device is a fallback of the master device.
it’s dump but yeah 💯
I don’t think so. Speaking from help desk, whitelist/blacklist is apparently a confusing concept for anyone that’s never heard of them before. I end up calling them allow list and block list just so to avoid ascertaining, yes, blacklist means blocked, it’s already on there, you can stop trying to re-add it.
This is a thing at big tech companies. Allowlist and Blocklist are the terms they use now.