Note to disprove your point but there are plenty of very technically capable people who learn English as a second, third, fourth language. In fact I would say in technical settings, such as here, that this is statiscally more common than a native English speaker with poor writing skills.
At the same time the poster had a larger vocabulary than I have (which is true for native speakers generally, as I try to stay within simple English).
One can get quite paranoid on the internet, you know.
(I am not a dog).
If I were going to post from a throwaway account for some reason, I would probably launder it through an intermediate language on Google Translate for one or two cycles. Otherwise, if I didn't bother with that, I'd certainly scatter some intentional errors here and there that I don't usually make.
I stopped caring about when people have incorrect your vs you're and there vs their because it's really about whether the autocorrect ai is getting them right. English is an evolving language that I don't think will keep those distinctions in the future
I think you are overweighting a fairly simple grammatical error. The commenter expresses themself clearly and logically. It is possible that they don't speak English as a first language, or that they simply are not that careful about making grammatical mistakes. Not everyone is as pedantic about language as you or I may be.
Unreasonable people can write grammatically, and reasonable people can write ungrammatically. I think it is better to judge an argument by its reasonableness.
I think many people would consider your response impolite and unkind to the original poster. Surely you do not want to shame someone for their lack of mastery with the English language? Surely you would rather judge an argument on its merits?
May I suggest a last question: could you see yourself reading this comment to the original poster face-to-face? Does it not seem rude and condescending to imagine yourself doing that?
This is more of a fun side note: It's more likely that they're a native speaker. People who learn English as a second language generally don't make the their/there mix up.
Other keyboards are seriously annoying by either not having prediction, putting them behind late T9s or they have predictions which seems to be made by someone who almost actively try to make me look stupid.
If I had a penny for every time a native speaker wrote "would of" instead of "would have" in forums, I'd be a billionaire. "Their" / "They're" / "There" is also common.
But the funny thing is, I noticed I would make similar errors after being immersed in a native environment after a few years time. Somehow I just say to myself what I wanted to write, and the slip-up happens. So native speakers are more prone to this, but it's not only there privilege!
LOL, you won't fool me.
My belief was that it's because English is not spelled the same way it sounds, so people who learn it are forced to memorize pronunciation and writing separately.
I'm guessing when you read people making this mistake over and over (I even saw it done in news articles) I guess your brain starts equating them together :(
I'm thankful for those people correcting it, although I think it is a losing battle.
I only add that the post above invokes some wildly spurious logic in counting the 5 instances of the same mistake as if they were 5 different mistakes. Such a basic error really makes me question his general reasoning ability.
Look; I'm seeing a lot of reasoning across comments from non-native language, keyboard input, autocorrect, and so forth.
None of this changes the fact that the usage is just flat out wrong. Have we become so soft in society that nothing can be pointed out because of speculative reasons?
If it's a 2nd language, learn the language. If it's the keyboard, get a better keyboard. If it's autocorrect, double check what you write. Stop making excuses for everything.
All these cries for why we should accept there/ their/ they're uncontested is no doubt a reflection of the frustration Carmack must have experienced, if HN is any indicator of the FAANG workforce. John is known to be very direct and unapologetic himself, and here y'all are losing your mind on a slight criticism. It's no wonder.
I think judging a hypothesis by its form/expression is not a great way to get at the truth. If a heuristic has to be used, then probably tone, coherence, and even-handedness are better than grammatical correctness. Those are at least closer to the substance of the argument.
I suggest that evaluating arguments on the basis of form/expression will not help you get at the truth.
It is your choice whether to be aesthetically dissatisfied by grammatically incorrect English. Many would consider that pedantic, though I might have a modicum of sympathy for you. However, I think the error you've made is to promote aesthetic displeasure into distrust for the OP's reasonableness.
I do not know about others, but I do not think I am losing my mind about anything. I suspect that most direct and unapologetic people have faith in the substance of their arguments, and would be frustrated to be judged using low-signal heuristics like grammatical correctness.
Could be an attempt to throw something like that off
I find that the people who are overly concerned about semantics tend to be the people who have the least to offer in terms of substance. The idea that you can draw a correlation between one's technological aptitude and the inability to distinguish between various possessive adjectives is patently absurd.
Here's a pithy quote I created just for you: "it doesn't matter how many languages you can speak if you have nothing to say."
This is a really ablest take and should not really be seen here on HN. You have no idea what kind of an input device the author is using, if they have some handicap or disability nor even what their native language is. There are plenty of reasons a poster can make this mistake, and even more reasons to make it consistently. Please do better.