[HN Gopher] Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)
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Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? (1999)
Author : program
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-10-23 20:30 UTC (9 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bikeshed.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bikeshed.com)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| 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.
| nanodeath wrote:
| Including this one, 34 times :')
| erk__ wrote:
| Interestingly phk's own site has only been referenced once
| http://freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/
| dang wrote:
| 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)
| NaOH wrote:
| _Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25888 - June 2007 (4
| comments)
| dang wrote:
| Wow, thanks, not sure how I missed that one! Added above.
| wavemode wrote:
| (1999)
| hoofedear wrote:
| "Bikeshedding" is one of my favorite terms I've learned since
| becoming a programmer :)
| squidgyhead wrote:
| 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.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Enlighten us!
|
| What differentiates a good shed from a bike shed?
| lostlogin wrote:
| > What differentiates a good shed from a bike shed?
|
| If my bike is there when I go to it.
| neilv wrote:
| Let's crowdsource that question on HN.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| The colour, of course.
| foobarian wrote:
| That's actually a great point. If this community keeps
| claiming building a bike shed is trivial, surely we can
| expect some good ideas. My acceptance criteria would
| include a solution for water damage, and anchoring - based
| on previous failed attempts to do that task :-)
| wgjordan wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] http://bikeshed.info/
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| Grabbing that domain, they must have quite an axe to grind. Not
| that the attack on them was any less childish.
| rectang wrote:
| It sucks to be called out by name in a document that's been
| referenced continuously for decades. I would be surprised if
| whatever he said to piss off Poul Henning Kamp warrants that
| level of retribution.
| eviks wrote:
| Why? Isn't that a trivial thing to do so that even the
| tiniest of axes could justify?
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| 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.
| eviks wrote:
| 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.
| azundo wrote:
| 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.
| Macha wrote:
| 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.
| kfogel wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| 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.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Wouldn't you change the color if there's existing bike sheds of
| the same? So you can reference them by color.
| YZF wrote:
| 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.
| mullingitover wrote:
| And per Sayre's Law[1] the more inconsequential the decision,
| the more intense the argument will be.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
| burnto wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| YZF wrote:
| 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.
| marshmellman wrote:
| How does one do this without appearing incompetent?
| YZF wrote:
| You just gotta pick mistakes that are plausible. The point is
| whatever you do the "bad boss" will find something.
|
| The very competent can do this without the boss realizing ;)
| Or it's just a tall tale.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Spellcheck is a thing...
|
| One strategically misspelled word placed somewhere around and
| neer the lower right of the page...
|
| At least that's the way some lawyers I know do it.
| fainpul wrote:
| You have a typo there!
| aureianimus wrote:
| The version I heard involves a 3d artist adding an obnoxious
| fairy flying around the character, so not critical, but
| noticable.
|
| I also think the idea here is to apply it to bosses who's
| self-worth seems to be tied to putting their mark on the
| product without being burdened by knowledge. (Because they'll
| want to change something regardless of the state)
| edgineer wrote:
| 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 of some other fee. This fee
| change stole the attention and hid the other more insidious
| revision.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > 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 56degN 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...
| bluGill wrote:
| One more reason to opposed planning departments - too
| often they are focused on the wrong things. They need to
| ensure the fire department can rescue people if there is
| a fire. If my house has a dormer - that should be a first
| amendment free speech issue they have no interest in
| (assuming it is otherwise safe). However the looks are
| easy for someone to verify, while the important things
| need an engineer to spend time.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Okay, so no planning regulations at all?
|
| So if I buy the plot of land in front of yours and want
| to build my house as a 40-metre tower of rusted Cor-Ten
| steel with 1kW floodlights every metre or so, you'd be
| okay with that?
| bluGill wrote:
| You have a responsibility to not spill excessive light or
| other polution to my property. Otherwise yes.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Everyone is incompetent, at least situationally.
| jkaptur wrote:
| I've heard this called "A Duck"
|
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/#:~:tex...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Do people actually do this? It seems silly and childish.
| Although I've never had a boss that _needed_ to find an error.
| Cantinflas wrote:
| 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.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Do you mean the babble hypothesis?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babble_hypothesis
| Cantinflas wrote:
| That's exactly it! I didn't knew it had a name until
| today. Thanks!
| Macha wrote:
| 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.
| ht_th wrote:
| Why not compliment them with a job well done? Add some
| details in your compliment that shows you've read their
| proposal.
| cerved wrote:
| It's extremely common in graphic design because it's so easy
| for everyone to have an opinion.
| jwrallie wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| Some people do. It is silly and childish. However they do
| find some good things to speak up about once in awhile and
| they are least are not shy about those things. What we need
| though are people who will speak up about important things
| but have the gut so keep quiet otherwise - very few of those
| exist.
|
| It is my firm belief that it isn't likely to find a the flaws
| in anything important (except for the obvious flaws
| intentionally left that other posters have mentioned) in the
| scope of a meeting. Once in a while you will by chance, but
| even if there is a flaw it needs some to look and think.
| People who think out loud often drive the meeting in the
| direction they are thinking and if there happens to be
| something in that direction they will find it sooner - but
| they miss the other directions others would have gone
| thinking in because they directed the thoughts of everyone.
| razeh wrote:
| I was writing software at a bank and found a bug. I was told
| to save it for when we had our audit --- because no matter
| what, the auditors were going to insist we fixed _something_
| and it might as well be something the development team wanted
| fixed too. I've heard of contractors who leave electrical
| outlets out of their plans so that the building department,
| which will insist _something_ be changed in the plans
| (proving the department's usefulness), does not insist on
| something hard.
| watwut wrote:
| I mean, all banking software has genuine bugs team dont
| have time to fix. There is about zero reason to save a bug
| for audit purposes when you can just take something off
| jira.
| jpmattia wrote:
| > _Although I've never had a boss that needed to find an
| error._
|
| I think that is key. A great mentor early in my career
| pointed out to me: "A" rated people need to work for "A"
| rated bosses. It's possible to have a "B" or "C" person work
| for an "A" boss, but when you put "A" people under "B" or
| (god forbid) "C" bosses, all kinds of problems ensue.
|
| [I've personally experienced that situation only once, and
| swore never again.]
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not sure what maps to "A," "B," "C" here. My gut says:
| "B" is the kind of person who you'd use this trick on, "C"
| might be too lazy and just not bother, and "A" might be
| confident and respected enough to say (and have everybody
| believe) that they checked and didn't have any issues. Only
| "B" has that mix of insecurity and some ability...
|
| Actually, I bet you could have an ok workplace with "A"
| workers under "C" management. Or maybe the "C" turns into
| an "A" if they manage to hire good people and get out of
| their way...
| jlarocco wrote:
| I guess it depends on what "A", "B" and "C" means
| exactly.
|
| But the problem with "C" managers is that they won't
| judge "A" work as "A" work, won't understand why some of
| the "A" work is important, and will get in the way of the
| "A" engineers, making them go down "C" paths.
|
| A "C" level manager brings the whole team down to "C"
| level and destroys the morale of "A" and "B" workers
| while they're at it.
|
| An "A" level manager can guide everybody towards "A"
| level work.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Yes, but you're thinking far too literally. This is a
| negotiation tactic from the far reaches of history. Humans
| have _always_ done this to manipulate one another.
|
| You want something from someone else, at some cost to you. If
| you let the other party decline something you seemingly want,
| they have the impression that they're giving up less or are
| getting a better deal.
|
| It's just compromise. Except you never actually wanted the
| thing you're compromising on and the ltjer party never cared
| about. It's just ticking the psychological boxes.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| 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.
| cornuto wrote:
| Reminiscent of the Philip K. Dick short story "War Game":
|
| https://philipkdickreview.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/war-game/
| djtango wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of the story about "bird mode" at google
|
| [0] https://mashable.com/article/google-maps-origin-story-
| satell...
| nelsondev wrote:
| Wait Google Maps is not satellite photography it's aerial?? I
| feel like I've been lied to.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| It's a (mostly) seamless blend of satellite, areal, and
| ground photography.
| maccard wrote:
| I've never done this and I've never told my team to do it.
|
| What we have done though, and I will continue to do, js force
| us to leave things we want a decision on in a clearly
| broken/prototype state. The number of times I've gone into
| meetings to unblock a team only to have the whole thing
| derailed by a nothingburger bug that was hard to not see was
| the inspiration.
|
| if you leave the UI element magenta with cyan font instead of
| default application style then you'll actually get a discussion
| on your UI element.
| foofoo12 wrote:
| 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
| dctoedt wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.contract-rpm.org/#combat-barbie
| m463 wrote:
| later: "how did this get built without a wall?"
|
| Can't help but think that getting a good review is also
| important, not just avoiding friction.
|
| What if they catch the roof, but everyone gets a little tired
| as the review goes on and they miss some small mistake you
| actually made?
| eviks wrote:
| > 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
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| 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.)
| warpspin wrote:
| It's pretty obvious that instead
| https://darkkhaki.bikeshed.com/ is the correct URL. Everyone
| knows.
|
| SCNR
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| Thank you. You can expect my ophthalmologist bill in the mail,
| after I used "fuchsia". o.O
| bluGill wrote:
| 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!
| casey2 wrote:
| way to shoot your own point in the head by making it unreadable
| and posting it a billion times _ptui_
| waltbosz wrote:
| 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.
| furyofantares wrote:
| It's incredible how "old-timey" the writing feels, even as
| someone who was online at that time.
| gugagore wrote:
| Does anyone have a reference to the original thread or issue
| about sleep(1)?
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