Comment Macacca, Jose, and the Haji (Score 1) 437
I didn't know that [...] only Indians can be named Haji. Aren't you being racist by assuming that names are tied to race?
A) Because of the outsourcing of tech jobs to India, the "cheaper Indian tech worker" is a stereotype - especially in tech circles.
B) Haji is a racial epithet for all people with brown skin or of non-Christian belief. It is a blanket term for "the other" or "them", and is used by US military personnel in Iraq like "gook" was used in Vietnam, "Kraut" in Germany, and the way the "N word" is used in the United States by rednecks: As a way to dehumanize and demoralize.
I will assume you were ignorant of this second fact, but have a hard time believing you didn't know the first.
Manufacturing a fictional cheaper coder named Haji for the sake of discussion may not have been willfully bigoted, but to claim that your fictional Haji was anything other than a person with brown skin insults the intelligence of everyone reading this thread.
Of one thing you are correct: Nationalism and Racism are not (strictly speaking) the same thing. Xenophobia has many shades, but they all divide the world into "us" and "them".
I don't believe there was any malice in your choice of names. If only you said "If Bob next door can write a app and sell it for $1.99 that you want to write and sell for $29.99...", but you didn't. You used a stereotype and an epithet to create a "them" to compare someone to and got called out on it.
Man up and move on. Don't dig any deeper.