On 15.06.20 03:05, Anne wrote:
Hi all
I support (eventually) removing the terms 'blacklist' and 'whitelist',
though my primary reason is different to the reasons already stated, and
I thought it might be worth sharing why.
It's generally recommended that names in programming be descriptive, and
that cultural references be avoided in favour of terms more likely to be
understood by non-native English speakers. Blacklist and whitelist go
against both recommendations.
Is there a list of these words somewhere? I tried to google that, but
frankly I do not even know what keywords to use here.
I've never liked the terms, because when I first encountered them (well
before Groovy existed) I found them very confusing. Why is the bad list
black and the good list white? To remember which is which, initially I
had to keep thinking of the saying "you can always tell the good guy in
a Western, he's wearing the white hat". And if the white was the good
one, then the black one must be the bad one. Yes, I had somehow missed
out on exposure to those terms as a child. I suspect that's a good thing.
On the origin of the word: https://www.etymonline.com/word/blacklist
I never understood why anyone would use those terms in computing,
instead of more descriptive terms that also include what is being
black/white listed. For example, I'd prefer to see allowedHosts,
allowedModules, allowedIps, allowedTokens, allowedImports, ... which I
find much easier to understand at a glance. If whitelist is used instead
for all of these, surely most people's next thought is "what's being
whitelisted?".
because very often you work, or at least start, with what to forbid. And
a word combination like forbiddenHosts feels strange from a language
perspective, though I am not a native speaker of any english, thus my
opinion is just an opinion.
bye Jochen
