[thaumaturgy]

Ironically, that wasn't an "ad hominem attack", it was just a plain ol' fashioned insult, which doesn't require a fancypants-sounding Latin label. But, you dismissing Gruber as an "Apple fanboy journalist" is a bit ad-hom.

Or, it would be, if this were a formal debate. Which it isn't.

[zak_mc_kracken]

Calling him an "Apple fanboy journalist" isn't an ad hominem attack unless you use that characterization to dismiss something he said. It's just an attack, and a pretty accurate one at that, if you follow his blog.

But this is totally unrelated to the immature behavior that he's showing about this whole Markdown drama.

[Ygg2]

Is he a journalist now?

[philoushka]

So you don't like the words I chose; OK.

I wasn't calling JG that, I was calling all those around him in the Apple tech press who also piled on with the insults like "jackass".

The point is that one side is name-calling and insulting the other, while the other side is trying to advance a technology for a large number of devs and internet users.

I'm just a commenter on HN with little skin in the game, how I conduct myself matters little in this debate. How the primary parties in this story act is important and revealing.