There are a few places in the US where going up to someone on the street and saying "not your mother's version control" will get you stabbed.

Both my mother and my father have worked in the software industry (though before version control was the norm). I don't find either version offensive and I don't see any problem with a silly quip implying my father uses a version control system unlike the one being described.

EDIT: It occurred to me that my story goes even deeper.

The syntactic template "Not your father's X" is a reference to a well known ad campaign by General Motors. "Not your father's Oldsmobile" the slogan went. It was clearly an attempt to remove the strong association with an older generation that the brand had among younger buyers. It couldn't have helped that the nickname for the brand was "Olds", but that association was also somewhat based in fact: the car was indisputably a favorite among old people. Once at a family reunion I noticed that most of my aunts and uncles drove Oldsmobiles, with a few Buicks thrown in for good measure.

Note that another effect of this campaign also worked to discourage the perception of Oldsmobiles as appropriate for specifically male buyers. Clearly they wanted all the buyers they could get. So "Not your father's X" seems constructed to actively remove gender stereotyping, not reinforce it.

Apparently the ad campaign didn't work well enough, as GM stopped producing new cars under the Oldsmobile brand a few years ago.

Indeed my father did have an Oldsmobile for a few years, during which he had a software startup. However, he had inherited it from my grandmother when she died. When the AC broke in a way that was not economical to repair my dad went back to driving Toyotas and he gave me the Olds. So that actually was my father's Oldsmobile (but I associated it more with my grandmother).

That reminds me, I've been meaning to ask Dad what kind of source code control system he's using these days...

> There are a few places in the US where going up to someone on the street and saying "not your mother's version control" will get you stabbed.

The alternative isn't "Not your mother's version control" but rather "Not your parents' version control". Neutral should be the norm. Not a big deal, but there is a lot of subtle sexism in tech and it adds up at the end of the day.

But "Not your parents' version control" could be taken to imply that my parents used version control collectively.

My parents divorced before version control was commonplace, how dare you imply such a thing!

To be clear, I don't think it's offensive, or sexist. Just enforcing a gender norm that I don't it lazy and exactly what I said...tiresome.

That's a level of political correctness I did not anticipate to be required of source control software. Taking it a bit too far imo.

The tag lines are one of the few things I dislike about this site. Show me the technology, not memes

Leaving the gender-stereotypes, etc. etc. aspect of it aside, git is quite literally "my daddy's version control." I used to work for my family (writing software) and one of the last things I did a few months before leaving was get the entire company onto Git from our "existing" "version control system." He completely loves it! And he internalised something quickly that I still see in this very thread - Git makes it harder, not easier, to screw things up and lose changes.

Unnecessary, agreed. FWIW, they appear to rotate randomly on page load.

And terms like "his/her" which is also in the documentation. The ordering shows a preference that is not necessary. The singular "they" (or the relevant variant) is acceptable in written English, so "their" in this case.

Actually, I recently read an article by Khosroshahi which included a study demonstrating that "his/her" does not in fact carry a gender bias -- people who use "his/her" in writing were likely to assign a person described without gender terms their own gender, cf. people who use a single gender generically (i.e. "his"), who were more likely to assign a person that gender.

Assuming that because "his" is listed before "her" there is a gender bias is taking things way too far - since language is a linear medium, you have to pick one to be in front, and I think most people understand that it's not trying to give the choices an inherent order.

Your first paragraph relates to another study that Wikipedia cites: "a study by John Gastil found that while the plural 'they' functions as a generic pronoun for both males and females, males may comprehend 'he/she' in a manner similar to he."

"his/her" is a bit of a bugbear of mine in any case, not only for the ordering, but because it lacks cosmetic elegance. "They" is an ideal alternative.

It is interesting to note that in most figures of speech, the male variant is listed first. For example, "his and hers", "Mr and Mrs", "he and she", "his/her", "Lords and Ladies". Yet, "ladies and gentleman" is a popular counterexample. Funny stuff this English language! ;-)