[from USENET, but may predate it]
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. LISP, 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.
