[Usenet, but may predate it] flame wars 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]

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