It’s quite amusing to see you complain about patronisation, and then see you turn about and do it yourself one comment later.
As an observer to this conversation, I can't help but notice that both have a good point here.
Soulofmischief’s main point is that meesles made an inappropriate generalization. Meesles said that something was impossible to do, and soulofmischief pointed out that you can't really infer that it's impossible for everyone just because you couldn't find a way. This is a perfectly valid point, but it wasn't helped by soulofmischief calling the generalization “patronizing”.
Bluefirebrand pushed back on that by merely stating that their experience and intuition match those of meesles, but soulofmischief then interpreted that as implying they're not a real programmer and called it a No True Scotsman fallacy.
It went downhill from there with soulofmischief trying to reiterate their point but only doing so in terms of insults such as the Dunning-Kruger line.
I only took issue with ", sorry." The rest of it I was fine with. I definitely didn't need to match their energy so much though, I should have toned it down. Also, the No true Scotsman was about deep work, not being a programmer, but otherwise yeah. I didn't mean to be insulting but I could have done better :)
Oh 100%. I deliberately passed no judgement on the actual main points, as my experience is quite literally in between both of theirs.
I find agent mode incredibly distracting and it does get in the way of very deep focus for implementation for myself for the work I do... but not always. It has serious value for some tasks!
I'm open to hearing how being honest with them about their negative approach is patronizing them.
Calling someone "on the first peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve" is patronizing them.
How would you have handled it?
Here is how I might have handled it differently:
Instead of
> Meanwhile, plenty of us have found a way to enhance our productivity during deep work. No need for the patronization.
you could have written
> Personally, I found doing X does enhance my productivity during deep work.
Why it's better: 1) cuts out the confrontation (“you're being patronizing!”), 2) offers the information directly instead of merely implying that you've found it, and 3) speaks for yourself and avoids the generalization about “plenty of people”, which could be taken as a veiled insult (“you must be living as a hermit or something”).
Next:
> You can do better than a No true Scotsman fallacy.
Even if the comment were a No True Scotsman, I would not have made that fact the central thesis of this paragraph. Instead, I might have explained the error in the argument instead. Advantages: 1) you can come out clean in the case that you might be wrong about the fallacy, and 2) the commenter might appreciate the insight.
Reason you're wrong in this case: The commenter referred entirely to their own experience and made no “true programmer” assertions.
Next:
> Essentially, this is a skill issue [...] Dunning–Kruger curve [...] chose to assume that you knew better. [...]
I would have left out these entire two paragraphs. As best as I can tell, they contain only personal attacks. As a result, the reader comes away feeling like your only purpose here is to put others down. Instead, when you wrote
> You could have asked for tips
I personally would have just written out the tips. Advantage: the reader may find it useful in the best case, and even if not, at least appreciate your contribution.
That's real patronizing. His answers were fine, unless you think he is totally wrong.