[ Usenet , but may predate it] flame war s 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 ]