Sorry. This does not seem like an odd retort to me. Just because you are opposed to the general idea does not make it easy :)

From your comments, it seems like you have little exposure to the actual time and effort spent in the patent process. And that is okay!

How is it an odd retort? If you haven't obtained a patent then the likelihood that you've actually gone through the patent procurement process with the USPTO is extremely low on this website. It's hackernews, not patentexaminernews or patentagentnews after all.

It would be like me saying "designing your own operating system is easy" and having someone respond "how many OSes have you designed?"

And by the way, your own story bears out the same: despite working for IBM (a company where attorneys familiar with the patent process are no doubt legion), participating or being aware of these patent brainstorm sessions, and stating that everyone had one after a couple years, you have zero. So what would you know about the patent prosecution process? Certainly not enough to say that it's easy.

Perhaps it comes down to an interpretation about what's "easy".

Evidently, based on patents being issued, it is easy to get a patent in the sense that you don't need a novel or nontrivial invention to do so. You don't need to go through the process to observe the results.

Perhaps there is a lot of paperwork, and in that sense it's not "easy". Or perhaps it is not "easy" to convince the patent office to accept trivial patents or patents on nonpatentable subject matter like math, but the volume of these things suggests that it can't be that hard.

If you knew millions of high school students write an OS as a project each year, you could safely conclude it's not that hard, even if you haven't done it.

Not only is this unnecessarily hostile, but also easily refuted. Here's the process for software patents, which by the way some countries do not grant because it's such bullshit. Software "ideas" get written up and then transformed by a lawyer into incomprehensible legalese. Often to the point the "inventor" cannot understand them anymore. Sometimes, managers get added as "inventors". Then, the patent is submitted and iterated on until it gets accepted.

So the hard part is having enough money to pay a lawyer. And being morally opposed to patents, especially software patents, is a valid position.

Your refutation is the equivalent of:

Step 1 - Come up with a software idea and give it to a lawyer

Step 2 - ???

Step 3 - Patent

There was nothing hostile in my reply. I just laid out the exact facts that GP put in their post in order to support the opposite conclusion that GP was pushing.