I’m sorry, but a corporate environment where developers don’t have admin rights to their work PCs is a bit of a WTF.
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Agreed. But still those env exists in real life 
Chocolatey has caused headaches at hacknights and meetups for us. There’s both a technical issue of trying to figure out how to install it on older machines; plus there are some racial sensitivities considerations to it’s use.
We were caught flat-footed while training and onramping new hacknight members, with hacknight members reading through the Meteor documentation and giving us the side-eye. I’m not sure what the Microsoft strategy is with it’s use, MDG’s strategy is for it’s use, what’s currently political correct regarding leaning into controversy or avoiding it; and what the history behind ‘chocolatey’ is… but it has some racial connotations, and people have significantly different perspectives on it.
The installer hasn’t gone over all that well in our meetups in South Side Chicago, particularly when new members arrive with second-hand Windows machines and are told to use ‘chocolatey’ scripts which never seemed to work, and them watching on as everything works out of the box for folks using Apple products. It’s not a great look. Lots of awkwardness, and people being thrown into racial sensitivity considerations when they came to hacknack to focus on other tasks.
This is above my paygrade; but I would vote for the older Windows Installer and encourage avoiding the use of any utilities or APIs that can be construed as having racial or sexist overtones. The risk of a misunderstanding seems to outweigh the benefits of diversity, since slang and innuendo is involved. I would characterize ‘chocolatey’ as probably falling in the same category as ‘isSlave’, ‘cucumber’, ‘jasmine’, ‘mock’, ‘spy’, ‘shim’ and other problematic APIs. A bit baffled that it’s got the green light at Microsoft. But like I say, it’s above my paygrade.
tl;dr - We’d rather have a hard requirement to use Mac or Linux than a broken Windows installation that can be construed as racially insensitive. So +1 for seeing the Windows Installer again.
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Not to start a flamewar here, but “chocolatey” being racially insensitive?
And what’s the problem with “cucumber”?
Innuendo on both accounts. People project onto the terms. Misinterpret partially overheard conversations. They’re sources for miscommunication.
Sorry, but at some point I’ll have to say: Get over it.
Cucumber. Seriously.
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No, we’re not going to ‘get over it’.
We’ve seen the cucumber API devolve into sexual innuendos that resulted in workplace harassment. We have a right to ask that it and similar terms be kept out of the official API, and to fork the codebase and remove it otherwise. Which we did. And we may do again with ‘chocolatey’ if it continues to prove to be problematic.
I understand that you may not value diversity and inclusion, but we do. We work with many team members that are women and minorities. And we’re going to advocate on their behalf. Thank you.
Thank you for that wonderful personal attack where you have no clue at all where I am coming from or where I’m working at.
What you’re doing here? That’s called “virtue signalling” by the right and it doesn’t help an inch. If those mere words are a problem at your institution you have plenty of problems. And banning a word like “cucumber” from a codebase is quite frankly absurd.
Behaviour like this only plays into their hands.
You’re not treating the cause with behaviour like this. So you banned a “bad” word? Great. The underlying attitude is still there. You’re only covering up the symptoms.
Why don’t you educate your staff on what “innuendo” is and how to stop that instead of waging a war on the English language? Because seriously, you’ll run out of words before you stop the innuendo by banning words.
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Well, much of the time it’s not our staff. It’s just as often clients or volunteers or community members or students.
And to be clear… we’re specifically talking about what goes into a documented API or utility name. Asking for lowest common denominator and neutral language isn’t unreasonable. It’s the safe and prudent course, especially if a project has aspirations to be enterprise grade.
To turn it around: why is it so hard to check urban dictionary?
Also, we didn’t make a stink about it when it was first published. We let it play out, took notes, gave it a try. But since there are technical reasons to consider going back towards the original approach, we’re bringing the issue up now to encourage that.
Yes, we worked with a rollout of a mediocre API to the best of our ability, that caused innuendo and some problems with minorities; and we’re saying that the prior installer had less problems in that regard.
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And you honestly think the innuendo will be gone?
I seriously hope that none of your clients ever runs across someone “killing the children”.
You’re way off base, by the way: You’re doing more harm than good with this. Why on Earth should I give a damn about what Urban Dictionary says about a term - if we used that to cleanse the language we’d be left with, what, 50 words?
You’re making a laughing stock out of yourselves: You’re not only pissing off the right, you’ll also annoy the moderates. And several of the left.
From the API, sure. The Meteor API only has a few dozen keywords. Again, we’re talking about what goes into official API and utility names. Preferably what goes into the documentation and guide. Because that’s what people use for training sessions and onramping new people. Once people start on their own projects, they can do whatever they want.
Anyhow. Thank you for your perspective. This isn’t some sort of pressing issue that I feel compelled to debate all day, so I’m going to turn off notifications and get back to some other projects.
For everybody else… I’ll reiterate: we’ve been trying to use ‘chocolatey’ in the field in South Side Chicago, and it’s caused some obstacles to new people adopting Meteor. Not just from the technical side, but from the choice of API language. Side-eyes, stares, questioning glances, and people leaving early or not returning. It’s been noticeable, compared to the older Windows installer.
Thank you.
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I never wanted to start a polemic about chocolatey vs. Windows installer. I think they have different purposes (installer better for a dev, chocolatey may be better for a windows server)
I don’t understand why the linux and macOS users keep advocating choco is better. It is not your business, is it?
As for windows users, I just say we need the old installer (dev environment) as much as one would need choco (for windows server and automation)
I still don’t get it: why MDG would not want to officially send link to both, even if they would not officially support the windows installer, it would be fine just to let it available.
So why the polemic? For me this is a solved problem. DONE
I’m locking this topic now - I think it’s run its course. If you want to re-open it, let me know 
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