I see your point, Paul. But if all you're saying is that hackers are like "makers", your essay is really boring. There is nothing special about being a "maker". And because you've applied no rigor to defining the term, you haven't even set up a comparison: you can substitute "mathematician" as easily as "painter" or "bicycle builder".

Meanwhile, your critic has provided several examples of ways hackers are specifically unlike painters. For instance, you felt painters needed to know about paint chemistry, like hackers need to know about big-O notation. No, your critic says, most painters don't know anything about paint chemistry, just "fat over lean". Painters, the critic very credibly notes, also get laid more than hackers.

I've answered your original question several times over now. You seized on the word "refute" and demanded that I provide a specific statement that the critique refutes. I caved and said, "ok, you said hackers are more like painters than most other people you know". You've now backed off that statement, which I still read as the core of your argument. You've now mooted the argument. I'm fine with that.

I agree, the critique is stylish and fun to read, and more convincing for it. Maybe that's not fair. But your essay got more attention, so I wouldn't worry.

Where did I back off any statement? I still think hackers are more like painters than most other types of people I know.

I notice now that you've finally produced a specific statement about painting that you claim he's refuted, though. And you are mistaken, as I think even you will have to agree. What I wrote was:

  All the time I was in graduate school I had an 
  uncomfortable feeling in the back of my mind 
  that I ought to know more theory...

  Now I realize I was mistaken. Hackers need to 
  understand the theory of computation about as 
  much as painters need to understand paint chemistry.

In other words, I am in fact saying that painters don't need to know a lot about paint chemistry, and using that as an analogy in statement that hackers, similarly, don't need to know much about the theory of computation.

Is this finally starting to give you second thoughts about the idea that he's "carefully refuted" me?

I think he wrote carefully --- his critique is funny, a fast read, and works on multiple levels (as a parody of your writing style, as a reasoned criticism of your argument, and as a takedown of the cult of personality that surrounds you). I don't think either of your arguments are particularly careful anymore.

But you're right, if one chooses to be harshly analytical about your essay, it is indeed hard to pin you down to something that can be refuted directly.

Again: he wrote something clever and funny about you. You should be flattered. Right now, you really just seem petulant.

Yeah, I'm done here. I thought to bring some logic to the table, but with this sentence "Painters, the critic very credibly notes, also get laid more than hackers," its clear that logic will have no part of it. What that sentence has to do with anything about proving or disproving the actual original point of PG's essay I don't know, and probably never will. We're so far removed from what matters or counts as reasoning thats its useless to continue.

You clearly haven't read any of what we're talking about.