[moonbug]

"Quite frankly, if you do this, you should be shot. "

Ah, yes. No comment from Torvalds is complete without a gratuitous ad hominem.

[loup-vaillant]

This is not an ad hominem argument. This is merely blowing things out of proportion. This would be ad hominem (and non-sequitur):

"You're watching dancing bunnies, and you dare suggest we should remove the parens after sizeof?"

Attack on the person (watching dancing bunnies), used to discredit an unrelated opinion (parens after sizeof).

[falcolas]

To be fair, he's referring to the code `sizeof(*p)->reference`, in which case I'd probably shoot the writer too.

[sfk]

I'm sure he'd appreciate a memo from Sam Altman about gratuitous negativity.