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Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

bikeshed.com

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Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#41

Post by anonymous908213 »

eviks wrote: post #37
anonymous908213 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grabbing that domain, they must have quite an axe to grind. Not that the attack on them was any less childish.

Why? Isn't that a trivial thing to do so that even the tiniest of axes could justify?

The 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.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#42

Post by eviks »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #41
eviks wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Isn't that a trivial thing to do so that even the tiniest of axes could justify?

The 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 r…

But it's not just a "quip", he mentioned some internal squabbles that discouraged him from contributing, so not a trivial thing to forget. It's also constantly reinforced as a meme, so hard to forget, so again the tiniest of axes works just fume to justify trivial actions like writing a response or getting a domain.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#43

Post by warpspin »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #38

Wrong URL; it should be https://blue.bikeshed.com/ Or perhaps https://steelblue.bikeshed.com/ . (For those who haven't seen, the site accepts any CSS color as a subdomain.)

It's pretty obvious that instead https://darkkhaki.bikeshed.com/ is the correct URL. Everyone knows.

SCNR

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#44

Post by jwrallie »

bee_rider wrote: post #26
YZF wrote: post #16

Reminds 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 discus…

Do people actually do this? It seems silly and childish. Although I’ve never had a boss that needed to find an error.

Yeah. It works wonders depending on the kind of people you work or deal with.

Some people will go through great lengths to find a flaw in whatever they look at, and once they see one they will keep asking about it continuously even if fixing it is something very counterproductive.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#46

Post by Cantinflas »

portaouflop wrote: post #39
Cantinflas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was taught to always speak up in every meeting by my boss at that time. Always, no matrer what, I had to come up with something. If you do that, you'd do me a favour.

Do you mean the babble hypothesis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babble_hypothesis

That's exactly it! I didn't knew it had a name until today. Thanks!

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#47

Post by [deleted] »

djtango wrote: post #40
YZF wrote: post #16

Reminds 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 discus…

Reminds me a bit of the story about "bird mode" at google [0] https://mashable.com/article/google-maps-origin-story-satell...

[deleted]

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#48

Post by Macha »

azundo wrote: post #15
wgjordan wrote: post #7

See 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 talen…

I feel like I'm missing the context of the sleep(1) debate and reading both points of view they seem like they're arguing for the same side? Would love for someone to cleanly explain both sides to this as I clearly don't quite get it.

I don't think Brett was on the other side of the sleep(1) debate, just that he'd previously had disagreements with the author of this post.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#49

Post by Macha »

Cantinflas wrote: post #32
bee_rider wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually do this? It seems silly and childish. Although I’ve never had a boss that needed to find an error.

I was taught to always speak up in every meeting by my boss at that time. Always, no matrer what, I had to come up with something. If you do that, you'd do me a favour.

This is often my pain as a senior dev. If the more junior members of my team propose something, and it's perfectly acceptable, if I just rubber stamp it then it looks like I didn't read it or do anything. So with some of the past managers I've had, I felt like I had to find something to point out, so best to find something that doesn't inconvenience the proposal author too much.

I could see the same dynamic in reverse when I had to propose stuff to the central tech team at that employer.

Re: Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)

#50

Post by ErroneousBosh »

edgineer wrote: post #24
marshmellman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one do this without appearing incompetent?

It doesn't have to a mistake, it could be any other detail that you know would be disagreed with. Comedy sketch writers would write a throwaway that was too off the wall to air, then include it in their proposal among others to make sure their darlings made it through. I'm also reminded of the story of the Tetris contract in which a revision of the contract had an important change of a few words, and also an increase…

> It doesn't have to a mistake, it could be any other detail that you know would be disagreed with.

A friend's father who was an architect used to do that all the time. He'd submit a drawing that definitely wouldn't pass planning regulations, then go for a meeting with the planning officer and say "Right well how about we swap the swimming pool I am allowed to have, for the dormer windows that I'm not allowed to have?"

Given that even down south here at 56°N no-one really bothers with having a pool, it's an easy trade.

My late father solved the "getting round the planning department" thing by simply being the only person prepared to keep welding new floor pans into the local head planning officer's string of rusty old Opel Manta GTEs...

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