holy wars

2 definitions found

holy wars - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  holy wars
  
     [Usenet, but may predate it] flame wars over religious issues
     .  The paper by Danny Cohen that popularised the terms
     big-endian and little-endian was entitled "On Holy Wars
     and a Plea for Peace".  Other perennial Holy Wars have
     included Emacs vs. vi, my personal computer vs. everyone
     else's personal computer, ITS vs. Unix, Unix vs. VMS,
     BSD Unix vs. USG Unix, C vs. Pascal, C vs. Fortran,
     etc., ad nauseam.  The characteristic that distinguishes holy
     wars from normal technical disputes is that in a holy wars
     most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off
     personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective
     technical evaluations.  See also theology.
  
     [Jargon File]
  

holy wars - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  holy wars
   n.
  
     [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.