holy wars n.
[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. [USG Unix], [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].
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