Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [Tech-board-discuss] [PATCH] CodingStyle: Inclusive Terminology

Bird, Tim
2020-07-07T15:56:25Z

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
>
> On Tue, 7 Jul 2020 08:33:33 -0700
> Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> wrote:
>
> > >> I was thinking good-list / bad-list.
> > >>
> > >> /me that has been doing a lot of git bisect lately...
> > >
> > > I think it depends on the context. I'd prefer a grammatically awkward verb that described
> > > the action more specifically, than a grammatically nicer generic term. In other words,
> > > yes/no, good/bad don't mean that much to me, unless it's obvious from context
> > > what the effect will be. With something like allow/deny, I have a pretty clear mental
> > > model of what the code is going to do.
> >
> > That matches what I was about to say:
> > Just using yes/no does not tell someone what they are saying yes or no about.
> > It should be more descriptive, like allow/block.
>
> After doing two days worth of git bisect, good/bad is hardcoded in my head :-p

Maybe I have the same bias, because good/bad there doesn't bother me at all. ;-)
Here is some 'motivated reasoning' on my part...

In the git case, the good/bad terms describe the result status of the test, not the action that git
is going to take based on that status. It's pretty clear from context that a 'good'
result will cause that commit and other commits to be added to the 'good' set. I think what
git actually does in constructing the sets is a bit too magical to describe with a simple
verb.

As an aside I just looked up 'git-bisect' documentation, and found it has support
for changing the terms used ('git bisect terms ..') so you can use words like 'fast/slow'
or 'fixed/broken'. That's something I didn't know about. :-)
-- Tim