main(n.)
Old English mægen (Mercian megen) "power, bodily strength; force, violent effort; strength of mind or will; efficacy; supernatural power," from Proto-Germanic *maginam "power" (source also of Old High German megin "strength, power, ability"), reconstructed to be from a suffixed form of PIE root *magh- "to be able, have power."
The original sense of "power" is preserved in phrase might and main. Also used in Middle English for "royal power or authority" (c. 1400), "military strength" (c. 1300), "application of force" (c. 1300).
I'm curious what kinds of problems took dozens of hours to fix. We had a script that was using master, and the default name of main (Github) broke things. But it wasn't a surprise, we knew it was coming, someone just forgot to adjust a script.
They just changed the script, took about 30 seconds. If you had a lot of scripts, then you could always make a master branch and use it instead of main. That would also be pretty quick to fix.
And it wasn't like when Github changed things (or now git itself will be changing) there weren't announcements. You'd have to have been living under a rock to not know about it and be taken by surprise.
The terms are from different industries with different visibility.
When this became a social moment, there was a sentiment that everybody should learn to code and lots of people were being exposed to things like git, and having casual discussions about those things on social media, at meetups, etc.
It went from being an professional engineer's tool to part of a pop culture zeitgeist, where everybody could share some opinion about it.
While many people know what a "master recording" is when the phrase comes up, the number of people actively thinking about and discussing audio/studio engineering remains way smaller and has way less intersection with communities compelled to make noise about language politics.
A little bit... a lot of people already made the switch, and a lot of people start new repos via github/gitlab instead of local anyway. I feel the argument itself is somewhat silly to begin with.
I thought this nonsense was about to go away noticed even github starting to default to master or maybe it was the terminal git. Sensoring tech words about things that happened 300 years ago is not OK
Saying a word is bad is pretty much the definition of censorship yes. Not the context it is used, not the implications when it is used but uncategorically BAD - it just breaks my somewhat autistic brain on the principle.
PS: I have an african wife and let me tell you she has no beef with the word, she will have more beef with me talking to the cashier in a way that is too friendly
This seems like a you problem. I have quite a few repos made before using "main" was the default in GitHub or Git. I have not changed them, and I have never spent more than 5 seconds thinking about it, let alone worrying about being considered "less of a person" because of it.
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