[Usenet, but may predate it] flame wars over religiousissues. 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.