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". 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 war most of the
participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value
choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations.
See also theology.
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