Getting grammar and spelling right makes for text that's much easier to read. Helping people remember these things is positive.

There is a thin line between times when this is true, and times when people are just being obnoxiously pedantic.

Correcting someone's language is always ok as long as it's done respectfully, which it was. I'm sure people that speak English as a second language really appreciate it, otherwise if nobody tells 'em they're using something incorrectly then they're never get to learn!

Yup - I owe my above-average native fluency to my mother's incessant correcting, and my English proficiency to countless kind strangers on the internet.

Just "silicon*" as a reply should have been enough. There was no need for the additional sentence and certainly no need for the source/link.

Even that's not needed, it's just a shitty spelling-only reply when everyone in question knows what's going on - it added nothing to the discussion.

Well, words do matter. This is HN...

Peer pressure matters a little bit. Standardized usage is a good thing.

> Do you think there is anyone here who didn't understand exactly what they meant?

"Aoccrdrinig to rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be ttaol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

In my grad school AI class I turned in a paper that I ran through a script (that I wrote) that jumbled the letters like this. The topic was related to the power of the human brain. The professor didn’t catch the double meaning and made me resubmit it normally.

I'm with you. HN pedants are so god damn annoying.

As one of them, I agree. It's easy to jump to the first thing you notice (something superficially wrong to point out), I often do this. And it's hard to think beyond that and engage with the ideas instead.

But then again, that's why we try to write elegantly so readers don't stumble on the words and instead think about the meaning behind them.