3 ms·
Bike-shedding is when someone feels the need to interject their opinion simply because the topic is something they feel they understand, regardless of whether t
by calambrac 18y ago
Bike-shedding is when someone feels the need to interject their opinion simply because the topic is something they feel they understand, regardless of whether that interjection actually contributes anything.
Bitching that '\n'.join(alist) should be alist.join('\n') is a favorite pastime of people who want to demonstrate that they've heard of OO programming. It's a perfect example of bike-shedding.
- scott_s 18y agoWhen I use the term, I assume both sides have marginal arguments - so the resulting discussion is a waste of time. I use it this way to remind a group that we're not discussing something important. But if one of the sides has merit, than it's important for the other side to understand that.
- calambrac 18y agoYou can't just make up your own definition of a well-known term and then call people wrong when they use it correctly: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hackers/19991003.freebsd-hackers http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/u...
- scott_s 18y agoI think my interpretation is the more common one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bikeshed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bikeshed http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bikeshedding.html http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bikeshedding http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bikeshedding All of these definitions require the issue to be of marginal benefit to the overall problem. The observation that people feel the need to contribute their opinion on matters they feel they know about is why bikeshedding happens, but it's not bikeshedding itself.
- calambrac 18y agoYou said "When I use the term...", a little phrase implying personal subjective interpretation, and that's was what I was responding to when I said "you can't just make up your definition", but okay, scratch that part. The more important point was that you can't call someone wrong when they're using the actual, original definition correctly, which I was (the link I included was how the term entered the geek lexicon).
- scott_s 18y agoI said that because, at that point, I realized we had a difference of definition, and I didn't know which one was more common. Having looked at it, I think what I say is the accepted definition - regardless of the origin. But. All of this is a digression. The entire reason I said I don't think this is bikeshedding is because I think there's value in discussing why join is a member of strings and not sequences in Python. Understanding this point helps in understanding Python's design.
- nostrademons 18y agoI find it really amusing that this has degenerated into a debate over the meaning of bikeshedding. Talk about bikeshedding!