+1 for being irritated.
Some people have tin ears

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Obligatory gear list: Fender, Rickenbacker, Gibson, Gretsch, Vox, Martin, and more Fender.

My favorite pastime other tha pulling out my tabs and jamming is copying and pastingand printing tabs from Ultimate Guitar and others, man do I have a collection!. Nothing feels better than learning a new song and tabs are the way to go for me. But I'll agree with most of the posters here some aren't very good. As a kid I learned the old fashioned way. I got pretty good at the Little Brown Jug.

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08 Fender Highway One Tele-Sunburst
09 Squier Custom Tele II-Blonde
04 Squier Standard Strat Antiqueburst
07 Washburn D10SCE natural with Rosewood backing
Fender Mustang II amp


Experience is the best teacher

i'm not fluent in sight reading, but that is not to bias this post...

personally, i think anyone who shuns tabs is a moron. big deal, its not the pure and intellectual method. i think it was rather clever and insightful to create this system. its just another means to the end, and it works great.

and honestly, reading music is only necessary when you're learning a song. eventually everyone starts memorizing things, and you use the music sheets less and less. so at that point, it really makes no difference.
but heck, if i'm playing in the church band or something, and i draw a blank, i'd much rather see the chord name on the sheet rather than the notated equivalent. sometimes, you only have a split second to react, not enough time for mind games.

i know i usually like to learn by ear, partly because its good ear training. i like to listen to the song and try to get it on my own. if i give up, i just reference the tabs.

that brings me to one other point, in defense of sheet music. most readily available tabs us guitarists make use of probably come from the interweb, from sites such as guitaretab and such. i know i've found A LOT of errors over time in these tabs. if i have to reference a tab while learning, i always check the tab for accuracy and see if i agree with it. not that i'm a pro, but i've corrected a good amount of errors, and had other people agree with me.

whatever works, that's what i say. i work as an engineer, i use my brain enough in the day