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Comment by GolberThorce | Hacker News Reader

you like to say word 'bikeshedding', adoption of formal intellectualish sounding terminology even when inappropriate is orange-site affliction I advise against. I am saying this for your own sake... speak truths with POWER

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It's a legitimate term. It's like criticizing use of the word startup or demanding someone put a dash in frontend or backend.

term is real... but is more like criticizing misuse of word startup. to be even more accurate it is what I said and not anything else

Maybe you don't see how it's bikeshedding. Ah well, let me try to explain.

It's because it's like if someone had forgotten to validate the user's role in an endpoint in a Django app, and someone said that they should have used Rails because it's easier to understand. In reality both are easy enough to understand to be able to do an authorization check, and the framework isn't the issue. So the person suggesting Rails is bikeshedding.

Likewise, if someone made another vulnerability database it would likely have the same issue, and this isn't really the place to solve it. If somehow this does trigger the realization to solve it, then it will be by luck.

We're getting into pedantic arguments, but bikeshedding is when multiple people argue to death about the easy stuff because it's easy, and don't argue at all about the actually hard stuff, because none of them know enough to argue about it. I don't know what your example is, but it's not bikeshedding.

I had argued for a less pedantic take, but I guess by replying to you I'm being pedantic. It seems to me that my example not only is bikeshedding by the definitions I find but also that to me it fits your definition of it. It's easier to talk about what framework you think is best than it is to talk meaningfully about process, which is more relevant place to look to prevent serious bugs, assuming both frameworks are capable. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding

Bikeshedding is when people need to make a decision on something, and keep talking and talking about the easy stuff. Your example of someone offering a driveby opinion isn't an instance of a group of people needing to make a decision.

Ah, it wasn't a driveby opinion how I imagined it, and I've experienced stuff like it in the past. It would then go into talking about rails features and libraries that could save the day, and the django counterparts. The decision that needed to be made would be what action to take to prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but bikeshedding is when you say "OK guys we need to figure out the architecture of this complicated new service" and then there's a bunch of debate on libraries and frameworks and very little debate on the actual (hard) problem it needs to solve.

Thank you for the unsolicited defense. Linguistic bikeshedding is tantamount to an ad hominem. It's the mark of someone unable or unwilling to form a rational, valid argument or engage in civil discourse. Let's instead refocus to the HN site guidelines please. :o)

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