The term appears to have originated in the FreeBSD community, and now stands for any topic which causes heat out of all proportion to its importance.
Explanation from FreeBSD FAQ:
For the original post, see:
Too dull, maybe?
Don't like beige?
etc. ad nauseam.
WadlersLaw is the corollary for ProgrammingLanguage design.
A bike shed is a shed that contains bikes (obviously).
What's a "bike"? What's a "shed"? In what sense do you mean "contain"? What do you call an empty "bike shed"?
- What do you mean by "mean", "sense", and "empty"? I've no idea, but then I'm not setting out to define the terms :)
Its colour is of no importance whatsoever and therefore is guaranteed to cause enormous FlameWars whenever the subject is brought up.
Personally, I prefer to use database tables to store my bikes in. They just map more naturally to my mental processes. I demand seven concrete reasons why you use a shed instead of a database table.
- With apologies to the intended butt of the joke... Whoever wrote the above owes me new morning tea, and came close to owing me a keyboard.
Huh...I was hoping to find some discussion of people's bike sheds. Mine is prefab plastic and holds five bicycles, old aluminum automobile wheels, a couple old dot matrix printers, some various electronics, and stuff for my rocket club. Did I mention that I am a packrat as well as a geek? The more accurate term is 'pacratist'.
Well, welcome to wiki, where sheds are made of tables, reasons are made of concrete and assuming meaningful meaning means you don't understand what I meant.
See also MeaningDependsOnContext, WadlersLaw