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Comment by grahar64 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you are using that right. Saying someone is bringing a bad vibe to your project, as the point he has a bad vibe is just stating the conclusion.

Like if someone calls you a bad programmer and doesn't hire you as a programmer, isn't ad hominem

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No, the discussion started with a the article from Bun, stating that rust has some technical advantages for them. The response from the Zig creator is a bunch of personal attacks directed at one guy, like calling him a stinky manager. All of these are fully unrelated to which language is better for Bun.

This is like the textbook definition of an ad hominem.

To be pedantic the ad hominem fallacy is about trying to deny an argument by attacking the author, so in a discussion about zig Vs rust if Andrew isn't trying to enter the discussion and just argue "that guy was stinky, glad he is gone" is not really an ad hominem, just not classy let's say.

> if Andrew isn't trying to enter the discussion

But he is. Both in the title, and in later half of the blog post, he directly enters that discussion. I'm not saying an ad hominem argument is always bad, but this clearly is one.

You're both right: the essay does not really contain ad hominem fallacies, but the essay itself is surely an ad hominem attack, on Jarred as a person. No judgment here, I don't know Jarred or Andrew at all, but like other commenters I did find the closing paragraphs saying the author has no ill-will towards Jarred quite unbelievable.

Ad Hominem is only a fallacy when the speaker's personal qualities are irrelevant to the topic at hand. When one man has unilateral control over a project, you have to consider it as an extension of their personality.

> This is like the textbook definition of an ad hominem.

No, it isn't at all. Ad hominem is only in effect and fallacious when the logic turns on the personal attack. "You're wrong because you're stupid" is ad hominem. "You're wrong and also you're stupid" is impolite, but logically fine.

To clarify, I think that the entire "History" section is unrelated to Andrew's argument, only the "Addressing the Blog Post" section actually contains arguments, and that section doesn't contain the rude comments, it's focused on technical decision-making.

Oh yes, I didn't clarify that I meant an argumentum ad hominem, which isn't the same thing as the informal fallacy of the same name. So yeah, I agree, this isn't directly fallacious.

prepending argumentum is literally just expanding the informal name for the fallacy to the full name of "an argument to the person", easily verifiable with one search query. unless you are saying that you were 1. originally just making your own contraction from argumentum ad hominem, 2. normally use latin in online forum comments, 3. often use ad hominem in your own speech to mean a different thing from the common parlance, i think this is an Obvious Fabrication (!!!)

Love the exclamation marks. So let's just use, for example, this definition: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ad-hominem

Here it's a type of argument, and it's only sometimes a fallacy. Seems like this how it's defined most of the time, unless you explicitly look for "ad hominem fallacy". Ad hominem without any context can be vague, I guess, so I tried to be more explicit.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, English isn't my first language, but I think "Obvious Fabrication" (capital letters) is a bit silly.

It's a reference to TFA :)

from your very link:

> ad hominem, type of argument or attack that appeals to prejudice or feelings or irrelevantly impugns another person’s character instead of addressing the facts or claims made by the latter.

> Ad hominem arguments are often taught to be a type of fallacy, an erroneous form of argumentation, although this is not necessarily the case. A number of scholars have noted that questioning a person’s character is a fallacy only insofar as the person’s character is not logically relevant to the debate.

You are right! The link does discuss cases where it's not a fallacy - in those cases, it is instead a valid argument. Again, not what you said.

Right I think the correct term is “character assassination”. It starts by calling him a novice, goes on to call him a “stinky manager”, and then lands the deepest cut possible in this profession: his code sucks. At least Kelley thanked him for his money.

This is not refreshing, I usually expect better from Kelley. The best move would have been to say nothing at all except “best of luck, Zig will miss him but”. Now all Ziglings must wonder if they’re going to receive a hit piece from the Zig founder if they cross him.

Do you think that all ziglings refuse to write idiomatic code, have public fights with the language maintainers, and then write giant blog posts about how they're ditching the language because it just isn't good enough?

In D we've had several angry rants of people saying they were leaving D (it doesn't happen as often since most things got fixed) for other pastures and the leadership has never acted in an unprofessional way.

> have public fights with the language maintainers

Can you point to even one such example?

Here you go

https://xcancel.com/bunjavascript/status/2048427636414923250

https://ziggit.dev/t/bun-s-zig-fork-got-4x-faster-compilatio...

How many other Zig users publicly announced their unrequested fork of the language?

It this a joke? Your example of Jarred starting fights in public is announcing fork then pointing to a thread where he didn't even participate but rather where members of the Zig community are slinging mud?

> unrequested fork

No such thing exists.

I think I am using it right. The implication of the whole post is that Jared's technical points about Zig vs Rust aren't valid because he's a bad programmer. The alternative interpretation is that calling Jared a bad programmer is a non-sequitur unrelated to the argument and is included purely out of spite.

Take your pick I guess, but the way I meant it I was indeed using the term correctly.

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