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To be fair, misspelling "Java" as "java" or "JAVA" is both a signal about Java knowledge and a signal about understanding what's canonical English usage in the U.S. So it's somewhat biased against non native English speakers.

But at the end of the day, software startups want hackers. And hackers know how to spell Java.

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I didn't list "java" as a misspelling. It could theoretically refer to the command line program of the same name that the applicant knows about.

Spelling it JAVA means you are ignoring that it could stand for an acronym. I don't see how that's biased against non-native English speakers; languages other than English have acronyms. I suppose it could perhaps against speakers of languages that don't have the concept of uppercase/lowercase; but then wouldn't you expect speakers of these languages to reproduce the (unfamiliar) name "Java" exactly?

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