holy wars

[from {Usenet}, but may predate it; common] n. {flame war}s 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 2003, 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}.

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