1) No, ad hominem is just plain wrong; honest anecodotes offer evidence about at least one data point.

2) Paul Graham's claims are no more substantiated than my own are. For all you know, I'm lying about my abilities, and my friend has never seen LISP. Then again, for all you know, Paul Graham was lying about the language he wrote his code in, and his software was really secretly written by trained hamsters jumping on keyboards to churn out INTERCAL code.