[mylittlepony]

> A lot of programmers are insecure.

You mean a lot of persons? If you don't, I wonder where you got this from. Personal experience maybe?

Anecdotic: I have always been good at sports, popular, and confident, and I criticized this article because he used a kind of link-bait title (should have been "Today I learned about inheritance and it's awesome", something like that), and he also turned out to be selling programming books like he was an expert, which is scammy, and reinforces the fact that you can only find good books through recommendations from your peers.

[tjr]

So he didn't know some aspect of polymorphism. Is that pertinent to his book? It's not as if using if/else constructs is bad or wrong. In some fields of development it would be preferred, for blatant clarity.

Does it follow that his book is bad or wrong because it was not written with understanding of this aspect of polymorphism?

[mylittlepony]

"You can reuse code with inheritance. Absolutely crazy. Brilliant.

All of this blew me away."

[EvilTerran]

I don't rightly understand why you would choose to assume the worst possible interpretation of that line and take it as grounds to heap scorn upon the writer (it strikes me as a tad uncharitable, and needlessly hostile), but

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5160287

[anu_gupta]

> Anecdotic: I have always been good at sports, popular, and confident,

I'm fairly certain this is a lie, given the way you've presented yourself in this thread.

[vog]

-1 for the ad hominem: "... given the way you've presented yourself in this thread"

[mylittlepony]

I'm fairly certain you don't think it's a lie, and you are just envious.

Either way, I don't see how any of this matters. I explained why I criticized the guy, and instead of working on that, you tried to undermine the anecdotal part.

[vog]

-1 for the ad hominem: "... and you are just envious"

[mylittlepony]

Are you kidding me? I was copying his style, to show him how irrelevant and childish the statement was.

Also, it wasn't an ad hominem, since there wasn't any argument being debated. Get your fallacies straight.

I guess this is why you have 9999 submissions with 1 point. To be able to go around downvoting and incorrectly calling people out on a fallacy (the new trick you have learned).

[vog]

> Also, it wasn't an ad hominem ...

I don't get it. What's the point of replying to a perceived false accusation of ad hominem with three more ad hominems?

"Get your fallacies straight", "I guess this is why you have ...", "(the new trick you have learned)"

[mylittlepony]

Let me give you an honest advice on how to not be a fallacies noob. Try explaining what's wrong with their argument, without incurring in the arrogant attitude of just mentioning the name of the fallacy and downvoting. That way you will stop trying to make every argument fit into a fallacy, and start truly understanding what (if anything) is wrong with it.

I must have corrected the 'ad hominem' thing at least 5 times today, so I'm tired. It's not ad hominem if it's not trying to undermine an argument (it's just insulting or trolling), and it's not ad hominem either if it's relevant (eg: programmer does not know the basics, that fact comes to light, and is used against him in a programming discussion).

[SanderMak]

anecdotal

[anu_gupta]

No undermining, I just think you're lying about being popular and confident and good at sports.

It's ok if that upsets you.

[dasil003]

It's really weird for you to jump to that conclusion.