Recent years have seen us rethink and refactor many design decisions that carry racist connotations. Git is a software version control system used by over 40 million developers worldwide, all of whom have been typing “git checkout master”, a command to access the “master” branch of a repository, for years. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, however, the tech industry has made many changes to remove racially insensitive terms, such as “master” and “slave” processes, and “whitelisting” and “blacklisting”.
While these changes are obviously not a gamechanger, I think that every bit of effort to create a more inclusive tech culture makes a difference – particularly when it’s already not easy for Black programmers to enter the industry. Although it will take a while to get used to typing “git checkout main”.
