I think it's dangerous to try to attempt humorous sarcasm if you can't pull it off. I agree with the guy, but this is painful to read.
Thoughtful analysis trumps cheap shots even when you're in the right.
Thoughtful analysis trumps cheap shots even when you're in the right.
There are plenty of smart people who disagree with you. Assuming the answer is obvious harms your argument. (I have a personal exception for tea baggers.)
I have a personal exception for anyone who thinks it is a good idea to legally enforce programming language choice in a developer agreement.
1) I had dismissed sarcastically (or worse) many people as idiots who I discovered later were right
2) I have very little capacity to determine whether someone is thinking two or three steps ahead of me, at least from a couple of forum posts
The pain of remembering multiple situations where I was 'that guy' is enough to keep me in check, mostly :)
I suggest that your "maturity" is still perhaps not to the point where you should be lecturing others quite yet.
Sorry, it turns out you are right, it's more like a quarter: http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/Tea-Partiers-Fairly-Mainst... Still way too many people to be tarring with a brush while claiming to be rational about disagreement.
The politics of the tea party are not my concern here. My point is that you shouldn't claim to be open to disagreement, except for that thing over there that commands the "support" of tens of millions of people. That's simply called not being open to disagreement. Honestly, that's fine; I doubt there's anybody here who is actually open to every argument you can find 25% of a country or world to agree to. Just don't pretend otherwise. As that link shows, there's no obvious "well, that's just the stupid people" argument available, either.
(I do draw the line at the "supported by millions of people", though of course I can't draw a bright shining line, because there are practical limits; one need not spend a lot of time pondering one guy's theories about the Time Cube. But dismissing entire quarters of a country at a time isn't anywhere near the line.)
By analogy, should I also not be dismissive of creationism, which fails to postulate a single verifiable claim which has not already been disproved? If I am to be rational, then I must also be able to expect at least some baseline of rationality from those I converse with.
In summary, yes, I am open to disagreement, but I'm not open to be respectful of groups which have nothing with which I can even in principle disagree.
Apparently, it wasn't a favored group of people by HN standards, because if someone had come on and said the same thing about Democrats and I had been standing up for Democrats, I guarantee I would have been upmodded to the sky. But "not the favored group of people" is exactly who you need to be listening to if you're going to be "open minded". Smacking someone down for merely suggesting that if you are open minded you shouldn't be insulting the people who disagree with you is demonstrating the very sort of poser open mindedness that I'm speaking out against.
And I choose and emphasize the word "poser" quite deliberately. Everybody knows they're supposed to say they are "open minded". Few actually do it, but everybody sure does claim it!
The owner of a platform is making a very clear and calculated business decision in order to strengthen their position. This comes at the expense of the thousands of businesses that are attempting to profit from the platform.
Just because Mac vs PC, Android vs iPhone etc from a consumer perspective gets lost in endless, meaningless, irrational internet debate does not mean that you can't have rational, in depth discussion about issues related to developing software for these platforms.
I'm frustrated with Apple for their choices, but I expect that developers will work with it, and Apple does have some good points to their aid. Overall, Apple will happily bicker with their developers, but in the end they will always be trying to support them. On the sarcasm part, I think anyone coming across this and missing that won't think too much about it, and no harm done will be remembered.