Notes on  HOLY WARS 

[from USENET, but may predate it; common] n. FLAME WARs over
RELIGIOUS 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 included ITS vs.: UNIX, UNIX
vs.VMS, BSD Unix vs. System V, C vs. PASCAL, C vs. FORTRAN, etc.
In the year 2000, popular favorites of the day are KDE
vs, GNOME, vim vs. elvis, Linux vs. [Free|Net|Open]BSD. Hardy
perennials include EMACS vs. VI, my personal computer vs. everyone
else's personal computer, ad nauseam. 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.

J3N Research Labs

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