this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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Why is it always the "it's just a word bro" types who gnash their own eyes out over the prospect of changing one of those words?
Fuckin exactly.
"It's stupid to change it to main, it's just words"
"Oh, so since it's just a word change I guess you shouldn't be bothered by it."
I always get them with "main is shorter than master, don't you want to type less?"
In software engineering, saying "it's just a word change" without a technical rationale ought to have you murdered on the spot.
The reason I tend to object to these things is that bikeshedding isn't free, it creates work and technical debt. That raises the bar for changes we ought to make, and I think it raises it quite a lot higher than objections which are frequently specific to the US and are largely imaginary (which is my honest interpretation of most of these changes).
That said, "genocide" is clearly unnecessarily provocative. It's also not an industry-wide change, it's just one function, so this particular change seems sensible to me
The people who legitimately hold the view that it's just a word might be a little frustrated at the small bit of extra work of needing to change their scripts or code that uses those words to the new words, but otherwise no big deal. But a lot of "it's just a word bro" folks actually do care and just like to pretend they do not for clout, because caring is for lame losers and being able to falsely present yourself as a previously-neutral party now moved to care by how stupid something is can hold a lot of weight when convincing others and make you feel cool.