That's... not what bike-shedding means (which the wikipedia article you link to should have made clear). The "computer equivalent of bike-shedding" would be ar

That's... not what bike-shedding means (which the wikipedia article you link to should have made clear). The "computer equivalent of bike-shedding" would be arguing over indentation style[0] and tabs vs. spaces, or over naming conventions[1]. I'm not sure that the thing you're pointing out has a name, actually, but it also shows up in the form of endlessly reimplemented canonical example apps like todo lists as well as the examples you cited. A related phenomenon - I think - is Zawinski's law of software envelopment[2], as "reading mail" is the kind of feature that meets the same sweet-spot criteria. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentation_style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentation_style [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_(programming... [2] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html