LLVM Developers Plotting Path Forward For Moving To A New Git Branch Name

[dkasak]

Pointless change is hard to accept.

Pointless resistance to change, similarly so

[JustinTurdeau]

Pointless resistance to change, similarly so

If you get triggered by the word "master" in 2020, you have way too much time on your hands. I have distant ancestors who were slaves and I couldn't care less about it. As usual, it's mostly hyper-woke champagne socialists getting offended on everyone else's behalf.

[cesarcafe]

BTW, I feel like if there's some missing link here: Why are some projects (like LLVM) devoting so much effort to political activism rather than software development? I find it quite strange... I mean, when you love programming, you spend the day thinking how to improve this or that algorithm, not in joining a political fight. So, where's the link? Do they come from political parties rather than from engineering education or what? Where's the egg?

[ssokolow]

Pointless resistance to change, similarly so

Change always takes effort. Even in ideal circumstances, someone who could be doing something more productive still has to review all the patches, and people still have to stop and make sure they haven't slipped into old habits.

Needlessly putting a word onto what Steven Pinker dubbed The Euphemism Treadmill for one use of one of its meanings is the closest thing to poinless (no return for time invested) that I've ever seen.

Re: The Euphemism Treadmill, "retarded" used to be medical jargon, which replaced previous corrupted medical jargon like "idiot" and "moron". Things like "Geez", "Gosh-darnit", and "Consarnit" are on a euphemism treadmill that goes back millennia.

Did you really think "God" was his name? It's a translation of "Elohim", which is a Hebrew euphemism meaning "god with the equivalent of capitalizing the G to make it a proper noun". Because ancient Hebrew didn't use vowel marks, it's unclear whether Jehovah is a euphemistic pronunciation of the tetragrammaton (YHWH) with the correct pronunciation being Yahweh, or a remnant of two branches of Judaism merging. Beyond that, I read somewhere that "Yahweh" isn't actually God's name either, but a semi-euphemistic abbreviation of his real name, which is a Hebrew phrase along the lines of "I am that which I am".

(Hebrew is big on names that are phrases, like Michael. If a name ends in "el", it's probably a Hebrew phrase referring to God. To paraphrase Wikipedia, "Mīkhāʼēl" means "Who is like God?".)

[ssokolow]

This is where the real cultural context steps in. This ideology is known as identity politics and it means that people as a mass are programmed to willful segregation based on perceived "empowering" traits in personality or physical appearance etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics

I am highlighting the word exclusive as often identity politics fanatics claim to be fighting for "inclusivity", also mentioned in this LLVM debacle, which of course means including everyone except those who are different.

I like this snip from the "Identity politics as a vehicle for oppression" section of RationalWiki's Identity Politics page:

The social constructionist basis of modern identity politics makes it attractive above all to sheltered academics. Postmodernism and deconstruction, broadly speaking, are its handmaidens.

While a basic concern for issues of representation and social influence is perfectly necessary to all walks of liberal progressivism, more radical identity politicians have a track record of offering absurdly oversimplified interpretations of society — judging, for example, the mix of skin colors of models and actors that appear in advertisements as an important civil rights issue, and views the integration of advertising materials as a significant civil rights victory, rather than as mere tokenism.

Its chief political victories resemble this; "speech codes" and other new forms of etiquette are some of its more conspicuous successes. In essence, identity politics is constantly generating new forms of etiquette. But, since the function of etiquette is to perform social status and rank, and all etiquettes create an underclass of the rude and uncouth^[20], identity politics constantly undermines the egalitarianism it aspires to in theory, and as such tends to exaggerate class resentments the more rigorously its new etiquettes are enforced.

Social constructionism invites us to believe that we can change the world by using different words. As such, building on its postmodernist tendencies, identity politics as an academic exercise generates a great deal of jargon. This obscurantist approach comes at a price, however — deconstructionists have been criticized for constructing elaborate systems of such jargon which seems indistinguishably like a device for wrapping empty ideas in the appearance of sophistication.

[L_A_G]

Oh for crying out loud... They don't even have branches named "slave" so the whole "It's referring to slavery and triggers people"-argument doesn't even work.

Sure, with cancel culture rampant and the recent anti-police protests in the U.S both people and organizations want to ensure they're seen to be on the right side of history. However this doesn't achieve actually anything. Well other than some idiots thinking they're doing something to help the cause when they're not doing anything of the sort. It's just narcissistic virtue signaling and nothing more.

If you want to actually do something about the issues people have been protesting after Floyd's death, do something of actual value. Donate money to organizations and charities that combat the issues that caused his totally needless death. Vote for and donate to politicians who promise to do something about it. Actually put your money where your moth is. What you don't want to do is pointless virtue signalling that doesn't achieve anything of value.

[JustinTurdeau]

Donate money to organizations and charities that combat the issues that caused his totally needless death

Go spend 5 minutes researching where that money ends up. Even if you're OK with 99% of the money going to the Democrat party, you should still have an issue with the utterly dishonest way it's being collected.

Donate money to organizations and charities that combat the issues that caused his totally needless death. about it.

There's a big difference between pandering for votes and actually doing something. The issues with police brutality have absolutely nothing to do with race anyway. That's been debunked with statistics over and over again for years. If you get your "facts" from demagogue talking points, there's no helping you.

[L_A_G]

Go spend 5 minutes researching where that money ends up. Even if you're OK with 99% of the money going to the Democrat party, you should still have an issue with the utterly dishonest way it's being collected.

Considering the state of the Republican party I honestly don't think anything that tries to get them out of power is a waste. I'm really not a fan of what the party's leftmost Bernie (who used to be a very run of the mill European socialist) wing has devolved into, but I take that over what the Trumpian Republicans have devolved into any day of the week.

There's a big difference between pandering for votes and actually doing something. The issues with police brutality have absolutely nothing to do with race anyway. That's been debunked with statistics over and over again for years. If you get your "facts" from demagogue talking points, there's no helping you.

Increased accountability, better training, psychological filtering of applicants and less "Shoot first, ask questions later"-type operating procedures is the solution regardless if you believe that the issue is racism or those issues and others like them. Where I come from we have of those things over U.S police and people universally trust the police. The last police racism controversy we had, which was years ago, turned out to be a hoax. A few days go there was in incident where people shot fireworks at police and yelled Black Lives Matter slogans at police when they went to break up a brawl and public opinion on that was entirely in the polices' favor.

[slightEdge]

Long time lurker. Props to Michael for creating an informative site.

Although I know little of LLVM, I remember learning about k8s back in the day and switching the master/slave terms to primary/secondary instinctively when reading or when speaking to teammates. As I reflect back, I did it to feel comfortable. If I felt triggered, I do not remember spending much time on it. It was easy to switch up my thinking and communication. I did not spend any time thinking about how others would judge me -although I'm sure they suspected why.

I did care that I would cause confusion. I would explain "BTW when I say primary/secondary I am referring to master/slave nodes" and kept it moving.

If someone were to use master/slave terms in the same exchange, I would not bat an eye. I probably would just not feel connected to them.
If someone were to insist I use master/slave terms because it makes them feel comfortable, I probably would... I am not sure. I have not been put in that scenario. Can't imagine I would not oblige if they were serious. I do not mean to blame it on my upbringing or how I was raised, but I do care about connecting with others.

It's obvious spending time changing branch names or lines of code is different than changing lines of thought and manners of speech. Adapting how I communicate with others is significant to me. I can relate/connect in a small way if a project wants to do the same.

[dkasak]

If you get triggered

Me triggered? No I'm on the sidelines here. But I certainly see some people triggered by this decision ...