Comment by augusto-moura
3 days ago
Renaming things to better names happens all the time, selectively removing something is much worse. Especially for a reference book like Gray's Anatomy
3 days ago
Renaming things to better names happens all the time, selectively removing something is much worse. Especially for a reference book like Gray's Anatomy
The severity of harm is highly subjective, though I do agree with you about the harm. The more important thing is the intent, which completely underscores that severity.
Main is also an easier name for beginners. I’m old school and always got the comparison of master branch to master tapes and such things, but people new to this stuff wouldn’t necessarily have the same intuition about the name. Main is just clearer (for now). Similar to blacklist/whitelist. I had no context for either of those and it took me soooooo long to remember what they meant. Allowlist/denylist is just so much clearer. Any reduction in harm, however tiny, is a nice bonus to just making things clearer for more people
Dunno about whitelist, but blacklist had the same meaning for hundreds of years.
No, blacklist and whitelist are far superior because blacklist is a normal English word. It isn't even a term of art, programmers just adopted a word that already existed in the English language (and used whitelist by way of analogy). The argument that the new terms are better holds no water whatsoever. The old terms were superior.
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This master tape thing didn't even cross my mind. subversion used trunk. git used master which sounded way better for me. End of story. They're just words, non-native words for me.
As for whitelist and blacklist, I don't remember having any difficulties with them. Maybe on the first encounter, but that's it.