So given the general global lack of really good software engineers (insert you definition of a 'good software engineer' here) we should encourage more people to consider a career in software engineering. As the 'experts in our field' it's our responsibility to mentor up-and-coming engineers and teach them how it should be done. It doesn't matter how you get into software engineer but it matters how you grow (or not) with it.

Stylised rendering might make it harder to detect the difference between real and virtual objects but clearly at the (great) expense of realism. What seems very obvious to me is the difference in latency between updating the scene for a real object and updating the scene for a virtual object. The virtual objects seem to be catching up with the real objects when the subject pans their view. That 'lag' combined with our natural sensitivity to motion is the problem.

Relying on IDE alone will give you problems when your IDE lets you down. An IDE is still a piece of software with bugs and feature gaps. If you can't fall back to a non-IDE dev process then you are too reliant on a single tool and not a prepared programmer. That said, modern IDEs have so many productivity aids that you would be extremely unwise not to use one as your 'primary' tool.

So glad I don't work with anyone that has an attitude like this. Such a sweeping and indefensible generalisation only shows how little respect you have for your peers, assuming you actually work in the same field as the experienced professionals you just rubbished.

That article looks like little more then the author promoting himself by taking a provocative viewpoint and using some pretty flimsy evidence to justify it. Ultimately the existence or otherwise of Cyberspace is in the hands of everyone who uses a computer. If we the human component choose to believe in Cyberspace because it somehow enhances our life or makes it easier to understand then why should we deny it? There are plenty of other far more abstract concepts I could attempt to disprove and ridicule.