I don't know how to say this without being offensive, but your entire comment is evidence that people should be taking those courses seriously. You may be an extremely competent programmer, but when I see the spelling mistakes and inability to communicate effectively, I would be hard-pressed to take you seriously in any way.
I know it is not your intent and I have tried my best to not take offense to your comment but their are a lot of issues that can affects ones ability to communicate in a particular medium. In this particular one (written) dyslexia can be almost debilitating, if a person has dyslexia, the are no more or less incompetent than any given person they just strive to overcome a disability in the way they their mind works. If the parent poster happens to have dyslexia then your post is the equivalent of walking up to a person on the street with a speech impediment and telling them it is hard to take them serious because of how they talk. I know that was not you intent, which is why I do not take it personal, but I did want to draw the parallel. That being said, I do disagree with the contents of the original post. I think their is a lot of value in a good CS program.
From the grandparent post: but when I see the spelling mistakes . I don't disagree with the conclusion that the original poster did not present a compelling argument, even if it where spelled correctly, but spelling has very little to do with ones ability to reason. All too often people use it as an indicator of intellect in other areas of reasoning, when doing the same thing in public to a person with speaking difficulties would be out of the question. It is roughly the same offense, but for some reason it is far more acceptable in written communication, this causes a lot of long harbored issues for those that suffer from the affliction.
I think it really comes down to two things:
1. It is (generally) obvious if someone has a speech/language disability when you interact with them face to face.
2. Sheer probability dictates that it would be ridiculous to ignore a metric (written communication skills) that I find useful in evaluating people for fear of offending a VAST minority of cases. What percent of the time do you think that someone exhibiting incorrect spelling or grammar online is doing so because of dyslexia or another disability, as opposed to simply being lazy or unprofessional?
I would never knowingly ridicule someone who suffered from dyslexia or a similar disability, but I think we have to be careful of becoming so politically correct that we are afraid to criticize or hold anyone accountable for anything.
It's pretty prevalent 1 in 10 people (at the top end) that you interact with has dyslexia of some form. Among people in the arts it is much much higher, I am making an assumption here, but I would assume it is significantly higher on HN given that their is a population of designers that frequent the site. It is far more prevalent that speech related disabilities, but less recognized because people are embarrasses about having it, some of that embarrassment comes from the fact that unlike a speech condition it is acceptable to highlight their disability, many times to discredit their argument.
as opposed to simply being lazy or unprofessional?
I can't begin to help you understand how many times I have been called lazy for not being able to spell, and how frustrating that is. That is the problem, you assume the majority are lazy people that cannot spell and don't want to learn, so you immediately assume someone is in the majority, because well you set up the odds that they are. But if 1 in 10 suffer from it, and the prevalence of people on HN exhibit spelling mistakes at close to the same rate would in not be just as valid to assume that maybe those that do exhibit them, may be in that 1 in 10 population.
