
The Original Bike Shed Email - gthank
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hackers/19991003.freebsd-hackers
======
ced
_Your email is about to be sent to several hundred thousand people, who will
have to spend at least 10 seconds reading it before they can decide if it is
interesting. At least two man-weeks will be spent reading your email. Many of
the recipients will have to pay to download your email._

I wish HN had this warning next to the "add comment" button. It would improve
my posts.

~~~
jrockway
On HN, it's more like:

 _Your message is about to be sent to several hundred thousand very bored
people that have nothing better to do. At least two man-weeks worth of time
will be spent reading your message instead of looking at lolcats._

It's fun to think everyone is participating because they value everyone else's
commentary, but HN is really just a bunch of talkative people mentally in
between other tasks.

------
pquerna
A related, and fun implementation of the Bikeshed email:

    
    
      http://blue.bikeshed.com/
      http://yellow.bikeshed.com/
      http://red.bikeshed.com/
      http://gainsboro.bikeshed.com/
    

Lots more colors to choose from, my favorite is Blue, because blue is the
best.

~~~
mapleoin
It even supports hex colors. And this is much better than blue:

<http://ff3323.bikeshed.com/>

~~~
mey
<http://ff00ff.bikeshed.com/>

------
yan
Poul-Henning Kamp is an incredible FreeBSD hacker, started the varnish
project, and was a fantastic person to follow when I subscribed to the
freebsd-* mailing lists. He's one of my hacker superstars.

------
marcinw
I love examples like the Bike Shed.. Another good one is the "Chicken and the
Pig" story.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig>

~~~
alanh
Mine is Shaving the Yak.
[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/03/dont_shave_t...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that.html)

------
bl4k
The most common bikeshed problem with web development is with design and user
interface. We nicknamed this the 'cornflower blue' problem (fight club
reference). Everybody thinks they know what good UI and design is, and they
will certainly let you know what they think is right.

I am sure many of you have had the exact same problem, and have also resorted
to hiding a new project from various staff members just to prevent the project
from becoming a quagmire.

~~~
_sh
My heart goes out to all passionate, dedicated graphic designers. Who would do
this job? Not I, for all the tea in China.

Not only does everyone think they know what good design is, and let you know
what they think is right, they'll be looking at you thinking 'what do we need
you for? why are we wasting money on you?'

You need to first justify your existence, then justify your abilities to
people who know better anyway. Who needs this grief?

------
SoftwareMaven
The bikeshed email (I knew of it before I knew of Parkinson's work) was a
defining moment for me in software development. I refer to it often. It was
even the subject of my longest blog post:
[http://softwaremaven.innerbrane.com/2010/03/why-you-care-
abo...](http://softwaremaven.innerbrane.com/2010/03/why-you-care-about-color-
of-bike-shed.html).

------
uxp
It is interesting that this email came up today on HN, along side the article
from Zed Shaw on how he is dropping the Python requirement from Mongrel2 and
the debate it has sparked.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1712035>

------
ciupicri
So this is why the sleep[1] function from Python accepts floating point
numbers: to avoid any future bike shedding.

[1] <http://docs.python.org/library/time.html#time.sleep>

------
portman
Is there an inside joke here?

Because I'm quite certain that Parkinson's bike shed allegory was commonly
used among software development teams well before 1999.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
As the article (email) says, it's from a book printed in the 1960s.

~~~
portman
Yes, it's an allegory related by Cyril Parkinson, originally in his lectures,
and then eventually in his eponymous book. I'm familiar with it.

My question is: why is the subject of this thread "The Original Bike Shed
Email", when there were undoubtedly lots of Bike Shed emails prior to October
1999?

~~~
eitally
Because this was the "Original Bike Shed Email" that gave rise to, oh,
<http://www.sheddingbikes.com>.

I think this was posted more in response to Zed's popularity now than because
of Parkinson's idea as demonstrated on the FreeBSD discussion.

~~~
gthank
Actually, I posted it because somebody linked it earlier today in a comment
and it was the best (and earliest) explanation of the Bike Shed phenomena (in
a software context) I'd seen.

~~~
eitally
Gotcha. I must have been influenced after having just read the "why I booted
python from Mongrel2" article. :)

~~~
gthank
I could have sworn that was the submission where I found the comment, but I
couldn't find it again for my reply, so who knows?

------
sofuture
This is ironic, right?

(I jest, but in-depth meta-analysis of community remains solidly, eternally
and earnestly hilarious.)

