arwhatever made a specific comment about the use of "less mistakes" vs "fewer mistakes", not a broader claim about the use of fewer/less for countable/uncountable amounts.
I think the relevant part of the "Exceptions to the Rule" section on that page is:
> The use of less to modify ordinary plural count nouns (as in "made less mistakes") is pretty rare in writing and is usually better avoided, though it does occur frequently in speech.
The exceptions (refering to distances/sums of money/units of time and weight/ statistical enumerations, phrases like "or less", and uses of "less" immediately following a number) aren't relevant here.
But both are "fine" in that they will be correctly understood.
I don’t follow your distinction about broad vs specific. The specific correction was offered based solely and entirely on the general rule of thumb, no? What other line do you see here?
> both are “fine” in that they will be correctly understood.
Agree! So much! I would go further, because I think this is the most important point: there is not a way to misunderstand the use of “less” in this context, which means that correcting people is purely pedantic, and not a functional issue or helping avoid potential misunderstanding.
Not only that, but sometimes people use “less” rather than “fewer” intentionally for countable things than can have a qualitative weight to them, as @danielheath pointed out. If the parent was trying to say that the bugs themselves could be both fewer in number, and also less damaging in scope, then less and fewer have two different meanings, and less is the more correct word to use.
> use of less […] is pretty rare in writing and is usually better avoided
Yes, I chose to emphasize that the rule is not absolute. Lots of people claim the rule is absolute, and a correction implies that point of view. My point is that even if using ‘less’ is better avoided, unsolicited corrections in public are also better avoided, because the rule is not absolute and in this case cannot be mistaken or misunderstood.
Worth noting that HN comments are not formal writing, and social media by and large is closer to informal speech, so the snippet you quoted can be viewed as validating use of less in this specific case.
I think the relevant part of the "Exceptions to the Rule" section on that page is:
> The use of less to modify ordinary plural count nouns (as in "made less mistakes") is pretty rare in writing and is usually better avoided, though it does occur frequently in speech.
The exceptions (refering to distances/sums of money/units of time and weight/ statistical enumerations, phrases like "or less", and uses of "less" immediately following a number) aren't relevant here.
But both are "fine" in that they will be correctly understood.