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- Hacker News
- Why can’t a site like this be reformatted so the text is viewable on mobile (at proper size)by whycome
- It's incredible how "old-timey" the writing feels, even as someone who was online at that time.
- > 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
by eviks - We are happy to be providing this public service :-). I wish the term were better known outside tech; it's useful in so many contexts.by kfogel
- How 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.by waltbosz
- “Bikeshedding” is one of my favorite terms I’ve learned since becoming a programmer :)by hoofedear
- I 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.by squidgyhead
- 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 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.
by wgjordan - Grabbing that domain, they must have quite an axe to grind. Not that the attack on them was any less childish.
- 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.by azundo
- This 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.
- Including this one, 34 times :')by nanodeath
- These appear to be the interesting threads. Others?
Ask HN: How do you avoid bikeshedding? - 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 - Jan 2022 (1 comment)
Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12533079 - Sept 2016 (52 comments)
Bikeshedding - 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 - Aug 2013 (31 comments)
Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - 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 - Aug 2008 (14 comments)
Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25888 - June 2007 (4 comments)
by dang - Just 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!
by bluGill - 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.)
by JoshTriplett - Thank you. You can expect my ophthalmologist bill in the mail, after I used "fuchsia". o.O
- Not 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.by random3
- It's pretty obvious that instead https://darkkhaki.bikeshed.com/ is the correct URL. Everyone knows.
SCNR
by warpspin - Here 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.
by kazinator - How boring to have all the bike sheds the same color. I've seen the end result of that - all houses in every direction are 100% identical, both the paint color and the facade in front. I guess they sold them, but I don't understand why anyone would want to live there.by bluGill
- Wouldn't you change the color if there's existing bike sheds of the same? So you can reference them by color.by aunty_helen
- We are a continuous learning organization, and selecting this bike shed’s color is an opportunity to leverage everything we’ve learned since the last bike shed project. It’s a fast moving space, and we’re a different team at a different point in time. The color we selected in the past may not be the right color today. In fact, this is an ideal time to consider a bike shed color transformation program to update all legacy bike shed coloring for consistency.by burnto
- The 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.
by YZF - 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 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.
by YZF - That could work. It's like a variation of The Dead Cat Strategy.
"The dead cat strategy is a kind of misdirection where somebody will say something so ridiculous or do something so outlandish that it takes your attention away from where they don't want you to look. ..."
1 minute summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NvncA_oh0
by foofoo12 - Reminds me a bit of the story about "bird mode" at google
[0] https://mashable.com/article/google-maps-origin-story-satell...
by djtango - Reminiscent of the Philip K. Dick short story "War Game":
https://philipkdickreview.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/war-game/
by cornuto - How does one do this without appearing incompetent?by marshmellman
- The better version of this is to deliver something so big, that no one will read it. Put the good, the bad and the ugly in it. Make it huge, make it read like a mastrubatory PHD thesis...
The printed version, should, if dropped on a desk from about a foot, make a thud.
Then write the summary that is short, sweet, to the point, and nothing but glowing.
Every one will just smile and nod and agree with you.
by zer00eyz - In the law school contract-drafting course that I teach, students read about "Combat Barbie" as a way of giving the other party's contract reviewer something to ask to be changed.by dctoedt