2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
|
|
|
holy wars
|
|
|
|
|
|
2014-07-26 03:53:53 -04:00
|
|
|
n. [from Usenet , but may predate it; common] n. flame wars over religious
|
2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
|
|
|
issues. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the terms big-endian and
|
|
|
|
|
little-endian in connection with the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was
|
|
|
|
|
entitled On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace. Great holy wars of the past have
|
2018-10-15 14:30:47 -04:00
|
|
|
included ITS vs Unix, Unix vs VMS, BSD Unix vs System V, C vs Rust,
|
|
|
|
|
Python vs Perl, init vs systemd, vim vs Emacs, etc.
|
2018-10-15 12:43:31 -04:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical
|
|
|
|
|
disputes is that in a holy war most of the participants spend their time
|
|
|
|
|
trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as
|
|
|
|
|
objective technical evaluations. This happens precisely because in a
|
|
|
|
|
true holy war, the actual substantive differences between the sides are
|
|
|
|
|
relatively minor. See also theology.
|
