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Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)
- darth_avocado 11mo agoThis article has been shared at least 10 times before on HN over the last decade. Amazing to see people organically find it over the years.
- nanodeath 11mo agoIncluding this one, 34 times :')
- erk__ 11mo agoInterestingly phk's own site has only been referenced once http://freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/ http://freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/
- dang 11mo agoThese appear to be the interesting threads. Others? Ask HN: How do you avoid bikeshedding? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30959723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30959723 - April 2022 (14 comments) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772108 - Jan 2022 (1 comment) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12533079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12533079 - Sept 2016 (52 comments) Bikeshedding - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12403557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12403557 - Sept 2016 (31 comments) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6188408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6188408 - Aug 2013 (31 comments) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739203 - Sept 2010 (2 comments) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=272246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=272246 - Aug 2008 (14 comments) Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25888 - June 2007 (4 comments)
- wavemode 11mo ago(1999)
- hoofedear 11mo ago“Bikeshedding” is one of my favorite terms I’ve learned since becoming a programmer :)
- squidgyhead 11mo agoI write code and also cycle. I built a bike shed in my back yard. It has become quite difficult to search for advice on how to actually build a bike shed.
- dghlsakjg 11mo agoEnlighten us! What differentiates a good shed from a bike shed?
- CodesInChaos 11mo agoThe colour, of course.
- lostlogin 11mo ago> What differentiates a good shed from a bike shed? If my bike is there when I go to it.
- neilv 11mo agoLet's crowdsource that question on HN.
- foobarian 11mo agoThat's actually a great point. If this community keeps claiming building a bike shed is trivial, surely we can expect some good ideas. My acceptance criteria would include a solution for water damage, and anchoring - based on previous failed attempts to do that task :-)
- wgjordan 11mo agoSee also a rebuttal of sorts [1] from Brett Glass, the sole programmer singled out by name in phk's essay: > Poul-Henning's assertion that all such ideas should be dismissed as "bikeshedding" reflects this dismissive attitude, which can be just as damaging to a software project as taking too many suggestions (or accepting bad ones). At the time of the discussion I mention above, internal squabbles drove several talented programmers from the project, and I was discouraged from becoming more deeply involved in it. FreeBSD was falling behind Linux in features and in popularity. While it has now caught up in terms of technology, it remains an underdog. This is, in part, due to the developers' dismissal as "bikeshedding" of good ideas that Linux adopted much earlier. [1] http://bikeshed.info/ http://bikeshed.info/
- anonymous908213 11mo agoGrabbing that domain, they must have quite an axe to grind. Not that the attack on them was any less childish.
- rectang 11mo agoIt sucks to be called out by name in a document that’s been referenced continuously for decades. I would be surprised if whatever he said to piss off Poul Henning Kamp warrants that level of retribution.
- eviks 11mo agoWhy? Isn't that a trivial thing to do so that even the tiniest of axes could justify?
- anonymous908213 11mo agoThe action itself is trivial, sure, but that and the quora answer itself kind of indicates the issue has been living in their head for at least 15 years, which is a rather long time for a dumb quip to be taking up any amount of mental space. Most people wouldn't even think of the idea of taking a domain name for the purpose of an internet argument. Granted, most people don't have that internet argument continuously referenced for decades, but I doubt 99.99% of later readership outside of the original mailing list were thinking about the name randomly being called out and were more interested in it solely for etymology's sake.
- kfogel 11mo agoWe are happy to be providing this public service :-). I wish the term were better known outside tech; it's useful in so many contexts.
- kazinator 11mo agoHere is the thing. If you have a Convention Manual which calls for a certain color for bike sheds, then you use that. Failing that, if you have several other bike sheds of a certain color, then that's what you use, for consistency with existing bike sheds. The color of the bike shed only doesn't matter if it's the only bike shed, and there is no documentation which has already settled the matter.
- aunty_helen 11mo agoWouldn't you change the color if there's existing bike sheds of the same? So you can reference them by color.
- YZF 11mo agoThe rule there is that it doesn't matter how many style guides you have or tools to auto-style your thing or whatnot people will still find something to nitpick and argue about. If the Convention Manual says all sheds shall be green they'll argue about what shade of green. If it says it should be Magellan Green they'll argue about whether it should be clear coated and what grit should be used to prepare the surface. It never ends. They'll argue about whether the window frames should be the same color etc.
- mullingitover 11mo agoAnd per Sayre's Law[1] the more inconsequential the decision, the more intense the argument will be. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
- kazinator 11mo agoThat's why academic politics /is/ so bitter, not /are/, god damn it! :)
- MichaelZuo 11mo agoNot if the bike shed style guide is substantial enough to contains every possible detail that a human being can possibly ever observe. Of course that can only work in a perfect world where spending millions of man hours compiling the ultimate bike shed style guide makes sense.
- YZF 11mo agoReminds me of a story a friend related a long time ago about how to manage bosses. That probably applies to bike sheds. The general idea is to introduce a glaring mistake into any proposal you make. Then the boss (or whoever feels like bikeshedding) can "catch" that mistake upon which you congratulate them on their infinite wisdom, fix the mistake, and the project can move along. So to avoid the bikeshed color discussion, just do something totally stupid, like not have a roof, or a wall, then the nit-pickers will comment on that, you can quickly "address their concerns" and proceed to have a bike shed of any color you want.
- marshmellman 11mo agoHow does one do this without appearing incompetent?
- YZF 11mo agoYou just gotta pick mistakes that are plausible. The point is whatever you do the "bad boss" will find something. The very competent can do this without the boss realizing ;) Or it's just a tall tale.
- wizardforhire 11mo agoSpellcheck is a thing… One strategically misspelled word placed somewhere around and neer the lower right of the page… At least that’s the way some lawyers I know do it.
- fainpul 11mo agoYou have a typo there!
- aureianimus 11mo agoThe version I heard involves a 3d artist adding an obnoxious fairy flying around the character, so not critical, but noticable. I also think the idea here is to apply it to bosses who's self-worth seems to be tied to putting their mark on the product without being burdened by knowledge. (Because they'll want to change something regardless of the state)
- eviks 11mo ago> it is about being able to point somewhere and say "There! I did that." This doesn't explain much since you can do that without personally arguing about the colors
- JoshTriplett 11mo agoWrong URL; it should be https://blue.bikeshed.com/ https://blue.bikeshed.com/ Or perhaps https://steelblue.bikeshed.com/ https://steelblue.bikeshed.com/ . (For those who haven't seen, the site accepts any CSS color as a subdomain.)
- warpspin 11mo agoIt's pretty obvious that instead https://darkkhaki.bikeshed.com/ https://darkkhaki.bikeshed.com/ is the correct URL. Everyone knows. SCNR
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- BerislavLopac 11mo agoThank you. You can expect my ophthalmologist bill in the mail, after I used "fuchsia". o.O
- random3 11mo agoNot sure those two really capture the essence. Plus you need to capture the luminance too. Something like <R,G,B>.bikeshed.com is what's needed.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- bluGill 11mo agoJust be careful. Paint is very important on a bike shed. If you spend too long arguing you will end up with the weather destroying your bike shed. This was the point, but it is missing something critical. Color is important even though it serves to objective purpose. Some colors blend in well making an ascetic whole neighborhood better - but even that way can go too far and you get a monotonous mono-tone which is worse than clashing colors! There is - and can be - no agreement on what is best (I'm color blind: I can see colors but not the same way most people do and so even if there was some objective perfect - it would still be different for me vs normal people), but we should spend some time figuring out colors. The important thing is to give everyone time to think, then express their opinion in a way that everyone else listens to understand (as opposed to listen to rebut) and then we come to a good compromise - understanding letting someone else win is often the best compromise - things like meeting in the middle can be worse!
- casey2 11mo agoway to shoot your own point in the head by making it unreadable and posting it a billion times ptui
- waltbosz 11mo agoHow delightful, if you click on the picture of the shed it changes the background color of the page and the shed since it's a png with transparent pixels over the shed walls.
- furyofantares 11mo agoIt's incredible how "old-timey" the writing feels, even as someone who was online at that time.
- gugagore 11mo agoDoes anyone have a reference to the original thread or issue about sleep(1)?
- whycome 11mo agoWhy can’t a site like this be reformatted so the text is viewable on mobile (at proper size)