Contents page

Index (83KB)

holy wars

   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 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.