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> a bad article written by someone who I guess must be a novice who thinks he knows something now but will look back on this 5 years later and cringe The artic

> a bad article written by someone who I guess must be a novice who thinks he knows something now but will look back on this 5 years later and cringe The article's author appears to be Robert Lefkowitz. If it is, then the author transitioned from nuclear physics to programming in the 1970s, has been a speaker at PyCon, currently seems to be writing software in Haskell, Ruby, and Java, gave several talks at OSCon in 2013, and is currently a CTO while also working with corporations to open proprietary code ... among other things. I won't further belabor the point, but what you just said (and how you said it) is one of my least favorite aspects of HN.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
I've seen a lot of bad talks coming out of pycon.
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- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  I agree with you, I read that article and was giving it the stinkeye the whole time.
- carljv 12y ago
  You don't get to be a good writer via ad hominem attacks either. Having had several interactions with the author, I'd say he has a knack for putting forth controversial theses like the one in the article. I've disagreed with lots of them--but I've always gotten smarter thinking about why I've disagreed with them (and have often been left with the suspicion that he really might be right). When I was younger I used to read things I thought were wrong and smugly dismissed them as due to some flaw on the part of the author. Luckily I've outgrown that. (Good thing too, as I no longer do embarrassing things like asserting that a multi-decade veteran of the industry must be some novice.)
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doktrin 12y ago
So, you can't really just appeal to the author's authority without addressing a single one of the parents points. Is he wrong? Do the statements from the article make sense to you? Because the stuff he quoted looked like a bunch of nonsense.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  Oh, I have no idea if he's wrong or not. Honestly, programming isn't something I usually think deeply about; I'm sort of tired of all the usual arguments. But you don't have to assume that someone's a novice to disagree with them. That seems to be a common thing for programmers to do to each other and it's disgusting.
  - doktrin 12y ago
    I feel ya. We're definitely a critical community, both for better and worse.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > So, you can't really just appeal to the author's authority without addressing a single one of the parents points. The 'appeal to authority' is addressing one of the parents points/claims: that he seems to be a rookie.
- Blackthorn 12y ago
  The parent's points were literally about his authority, so the response was perfectly fine.
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  - doktrin 12y ago
    No, while he did make assumptions about the author's experience he directly addressed multiple points from the piece. It wasn't "just" about authority. Assumptions were made about authority based on bush league level mistakes in the writing.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

I've seen a lot of bad talks coming out of pycon.

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GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
I agree with you, I read that article and was giving it the stinkeye the whole time.
carljv 12y ago
You don't get to be a good writer via ad hominem attacks either. Having had several interactions with the author, I'd say he has a knack for putting forth controversial theses like the one in the article. I've disagreed with lots of them--but I've always gotten smarter thinking about why I've disagreed with them (and have often been left with the suspicion that he really might be right). When I was younger I used to read things I thought were wrong and smugly dismissed them as due to some flaw on the part of the author. Luckily I've outgrown that. (Good thing too, as I no longer do embarrassing things like asserting that a multi-decade veteran of the industry must be some novice.)
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doktrin 12y ago

So, you can't really just appeal to the author's authority without addressing a single one of the parents points. Is he wrong? Do the statements from the article make sense to you? Because the stuff he quoted looked like a bunch of nonsense.

thaumaturgy 12y ago
Oh, I have no idea if he's wrong or not. Honestly, programming isn't something I usually think deeply about; I'm sort of tired of all the usual arguments. But you don't have to assume that someone's a novice to disagree with them. That seems to be a common thing for programmers to do to each other and it's disgusting.
- doktrin 12y ago
  I feel ya. We're definitely a critical community, both for better and worse.
Dewie 12y ago
> So, you can't really just appeal to the author's authority without addressing a single one of the parents points. The 'appeal to authority' is addressing one of the parents points/claims: that he seems to be a rookie.
Blackthorn 12y ago
The parent's points were literally about his authority, so the response was perfectly fine.
- deleted 12y ago
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- doktrin 12y ago
  No, while he did make assumptions about the author's experience he directly addressed multiple points from the piece. It wasn't "just" about authority. Assumptions were made about authority based on bush league level mistakes in the writing.