Proofreading is tedious. I can do it well when I have to, and prefer not to when it is unimportant (e.g. in a slashdot comment), because I value my time and effort and would prefer to spend it on more worthwhile things. The only downside to not proofreading is when people like you try to use mistakes that I would have caught proofreading as an ad hominem attack. This is a downside that I think is more than compensated by the benefit of my time. Most sane people understand that a slashdot comment is not the same as an important document that should be carefully proofread.

I am a software engineer. I create things. I'm sure you latch on your "amazing" ability to proofread because you are otherwise talentless. My syntax errors while coding are caught by the compiler. This is more efficient than proofreading. Other people at my company can spend their time doing documentation. I can do it, and do it well, when it is necessary. Otherwise I would prefer spending my time being productive.

You are like a receptionist who thinks that the doctor would rather be a receptionist like yourself if only he could improve his handwriting.

It would just be sad, if not for the fact that you use it as a juvenile debate strategy. This makes it pathetic.

I am not embarrassed by errors I make while typing in an informal forum like slashdot. I would be embarrassed if I had such low intellectual ability as to need to resort to ad hominem attacks like you apparently need to do.

I would guess that the game will just end up being more random. Humans are bad at being random number generators, so that opens the window for psychological strategies. A computer can be a pretty near perfect random number generator, and therefore is immune to the psychological aspect of the game. It could try to exploit this weakness in the human players through some kind of psychological heuristic algorithm, but I think that also opens the door to it being tricked by those same human players especially if they successfully guess what strategy the AI is using. It may just be better to go by the numbers.

Learn an argument style that has more depth than simply looking for typos in people's comments. You're "if the glove does not fit, you must aquit" level of logical ability only impresses other people like you. Leave the real logic to people with more in their cognitive toolkit than spellchecking. You have already been replaced by computers already anyway.

Well, given that they are only mistakes I make while typing, they are by definition typographical errors. More importantly pointing out typos as a means of argument is childish, and indicative of general shittiness as a person.

I wasn;t aware I needed an excuse for typos in a slashdot comment.

Get a life.

I'd say "poor people suck at making money" is a tautology.

Do you expect every one of their ideas to be successful? Their success rate is actually much higher than average. Even their failures would be considered successes by others with lower standards.

There is a reason they have a ton of cash.

Obviously it's us. I thought it was pretty clear to anyone reading this that we as a company are the ones losing out. The old guys that can't code win. They have a steady job they don't deserve.

It's probably a good (for them/us) thing that older people value their free time more. That doesn't make them better workers. I was talking about what is better for a company, not what is better for an employee. I personally don't consider my time spent at work wasted. I take pride in my work, and I like to see the fruits of my labor being utilized. I don't stay at work a minute later than I have to, because I've got a kid at home. I am not "young". I am saying I would be more likely to hire a younger person over an older person, because in my experience they are more productive on average.

We recently had to shift 6 people out of our program to other projects due to an accounting error. We got rid of 3 young people and 3 old people. Losing the young people was a big setback. The old people we lost were doing more harm than good, and I'm sure we will be more productive without them. The only reason the other department took them was because the also got the young people. This is just one example that is particularly fresh in my mind. It is not always true that young people are better than older people, but at least at my company it is true more often than not.

And I am not even saying this as a young person. The older people at our company agree that the older people suck. They just disagree on which old people suck.

I would say most programmers in general lack this ability.

I think it is *possible* for experience to help creativity, but it seems more often than not it is used to hinder creativity. Why figure out a new way to do something if you already (think you) know the best way.

Depending on the school, the way they were taught in school may in fact be the current best way to solve a problem. I find stubborn older programmers are just as likely to latch on to their one way of doing things, and at least the new stubborn programmers will have latched onto a slightly more modern single solution.

The only thing worse than the people skills of younger programmers is the people skills of older programmers.

I don't see old programmers being more efficient. I see good programmers being more efficient. And as I said before, I find the younger programmers to be much more humble even when the do in fact know all these things they just learned in school (often things older programmers who went to school a long time ago, or never went to school have never heard of). I find that younger programmers, especially the ones that are still dating still have an incentive to be able to relate to other people.

And yes, the young programmers don't have all the experience they need, but they are like sponges. They absorb information you give them. If you point them in the right direction, their limitless energy and enthusiasm is often more than I myself can muster.

We have lots of old bad programmers that we can;t even give busy work to because they feel it is beneath them. Or they just bitch and moan and take a really long time to do a half ass job. Then you put some new grad on the job, and they follow directions and finish the task in a fraction of the time

A *good* experienced programmer is invaluable. The problem is that most programmers are terrible. Young programmers are malleable. Old programmers are either really good, or more often they suck and can't change because are stubborn as well.

I don't really pay attention to moderations. Besides, for anyone who read to the end of my post, they would see that what I wrote was meant to an equally unfair generalization opposite of the parent comment. I lean more toward the view I presented, but I think a more accurate view is that terrible people and terrible coders come in all ages, though I think my bias is still toward younger porgrammers (even though I am no longer young).

As I said, I was just offering a counter-generalization.

At my company we just fire the new grads with attitudes. All the old guys running the show have a real hard time firing (and in some cases not hiring) people if they are supporting families.

We seem to practice reverse age discrimination.

I can see the logic of the rationale you provided. It's just not the reality I see everyday.

I see young people who are very hard working and excited to gain experience from their older colleagues. I see older workers with bad attitudes that freak out when they don't feel they are given the appropriate level of respect. They are the ones acting like know-it-alls, and the code they write sucks. The code the young people write sucks too, but at least they take criticism well.

Maybe you're getting all the kids we fire.

Usually positions describe how much experience they require. If a very experienced person shows up to interview for an entry level engineer position expecting a salary to match his experience, then he's SOL. If you've put out a job offer for a senior engineer position, you should be expecting the candidates to want a salary to match their value. Not all companies pay as well as Google, that's why so many people want to work there.

There is really no reason for Google to not hire someone that is well qualified for the position they are seeking and asking for a salary that matches that position.

Corporations are in the business of making money. They don't care how old you are if you can help them make money.

You should sue him.