Since this is Hacker News, I'll point out a way that this applies to programming: code standards and reviews. Time after time throughout my career, I've seen th

Since this is Hacker News, I'll point out a way that this applies to programming: code standards and reviews. Time after time throughout my career, I've seen the most picky, idiosyncratic programmers impose their will on the rest of the project by their simple willingness to block commits until their whims are satisfied. Since review etiquette usually precludes a third person overriding another's pending objections to approve, the impasse is usually resolved by acceding to the bikeshedder's preference in the name of progress. Sometimes this enforcement of the most restrictive standard is a good thing, forcing people to write code that's safer, more testable, more portable, etc. More often IMX, it's just enforcing arbitrary choices and rewarding poor collaborative behavior in the process.