That is not an "ad personam" attack. (Which is, FYI, usually called "ad hominem". In fact it is so widely known under that name that if you call it that, there is no need to quote from a wikipedia article.) Why not? Because I was not making the point to argue that you were wrong. Rather I was making the point to suggest that you might want to reconsider your current attitude. Certainly posts like Re^2: Tabs vs Spaces lets give this a go demonstrate an unwillingness to listen to people who you probably have a lot to learn from. And being unnecessarily snide and insulting is unlikely to win friends or influence people.
In fact a good example of your snideness is in the post I am responding to where you talk about, "... Those of us competent at debate..." Thereby implying that you're competent at debate, and I'm not. While it is satisfying to get a dig like that in, I suggest that you review my posting history before convincing yourself that I know nothing and am incompetent at debate.
Furthermore I should point out that when I wish to argue that you're wrong, I'll argue that point directly. In fact I did. I stated that the benefit you seek to derive (let each programmer choose the indentation style they get to see) is minor at best, and there are many costs you didn't address with attempting to push tabs everywhere. I enumerated some of those costs, with direct reference to my personal situation. Based on experience, I find those costs to be far worse than the benefit you seek to derive, therefore I think that space indentation is better.
If you wish to demonstrate your competence at debate, a good place to start would be addressing the points that I made. In other words review the costs that I point out, and explain why those costs are smaller than I think they are, and the benefit you're seeking is bigger than I think it is. This would actually address the substance of my posts much more effectively than jumping up and down and claiming that I'm issuing an ad personam attack. | [reply] |
I'm sure tilly can defend himself, but I just want to chime in to say you don't understand the meaning of calling an "ad hominem" a fallacy, some clown at Wikipedia notwithstanding. "You can't be right because you're a pompous ass who doesn't know his place," is an ad hominem argument, and not to be taken seriously. I happen to think your attitude is extremely annoying, and I can tell that I would not presently hire you for any job that required you to work with a team. But you might still be right about some things. Tying irrelevant character traits to the validity of your arguments would indeed be ad hominem.
As for the grandparent node, the point is that you have demonstrated that you don't have experience, and that happens in fact to be relevant to your power to make judgment calls. You plainly don't think so, but that's just too damned bad. Everyone else in the world (probably you, too) make judgments about how seriously to take other people's judgments on the basis of factors they deem relevant. The relevant issue here is that you are not likely a veteran programmer, so pointing that out is simply not a "fallacy." In addition to your evident inexperience, your omission of meaningful consideration of the alternative position in your so-called "argument" is another bright red flag, marking you as "what is often called," to use your insufferable phrase, a "blowhard." HAND.
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Oh. You're one of those people who cry "Ad hominem". Which implies that you think your audience is too stupid to notice.
Your arguments must be worthless.
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You misspelled argument. Again. | [reply] |