Working on a few things in your bedroom doesn't make you an expert
zachinglis.com
zachinglis.com
At that point I realized the author isn't in a position to criticize the "novice" writing and speaking of others. And a Web page with a red background doesn't demonstrate the experience and maturity the author evidently thinks he possesses.
I've worked on a variety of projects, small and huge. Lead the redesign of a major website among other things.
I never criticised people's grammar, purely where they come from.
No, I scanned the article and made a judgment. If you don't want to be judged on your use of English, improve it. What works for computer languages should work for English too.
However unfair you believe it to be, people are going to judge you based on your use and misuse of English, and they will often do it in a flash. Complaining about it won't work -- all you can do is adapt and overcome, which I am sure is within your power.
> I've worked on a variety of projects, small and huge. Lead the redesign of a major website among other things.
I believe you "led" the redesign of a major Website.
> I never criticised people's grammar ...
Under the circumstances, that's a wise choice.
> ... purely where they come from.
I believe you mean "where they're coming from", as in "what their attitudes are", rather than their place of origin or residence. But I could be mistaken -- the above might be an Americanism with no British corollary.
I find it very funny that people will unsentimentally dissect a piece of computer code (computer "language") with the aim of extracting a 10% improvement in its running speed, or readability, or maintainability, but will bristle at the suggestion that the same high standards could be applied to written language.
However, your comment was about how you skipped through a post and made a snap judgement. This doesn't help anyone - nor does it make your comments relevant. The post was not about anyone's spelling or grammar and you were the only person out of the thousands who read it who had a problem.
As for judgement which no doubt you're spitting vitriol at your screen, it can be spelt either way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement
On the contrary, it does both. You need to learn that, in modern times, people are going to glance at your website, read the first few sentences, and draw a conclusion. Again, complaining about it is pointless -- all you can do is accommodate reality, as I am sure you can do.
Top-flight advertising executives spend a huge amount of time writing and rewriting advertising copy, sometimes changing just one word before submitting the result to a focus group, because a prime-time advertising spot can cost upwards of a million dollars. Do you think they complain that consumers rejected their offering because they chose the wrong word, or worse, misspelled it? No, they fix the problem and get on with their lives.
Fix the problem and get on with your life.
I know all about copy, rewriting and reiterating on such. This is a blog, not a high level advertisement. Most advertising can't be changed when in the Real World™ - whereas a blog can be.
If you don't like the article, you don't have to read it. If you want to comment about it, read it so you actually know what you're talking about.
That depends. Do you actually want people to read what you write, or is this all an exercise in lexical onanism?
> If you want to comment about it, read it so you actually know what you're talking about.
Your problem is not that I didn't read the article. Your problem is that I did.
I have read a few lines in the Bible, there for I am an expert. I have read a few lines of a medical text book, therefore I can perform operations. I have read a line of a blog post, therefore I know what the blog post says and about the author.
(Also, in response to your earlier criticism about design. What do you think design is? Prettiness? Design is about the simplest answer to the problem. As you would have read - that was a Live Redesign, and since has been changed with yet more fiddling. It was not meant to be.)
The truth is I received hundreds of responses via Twitter and Email (some seemed scared to talk so openly about such a problem for fear of being ostracised.) It is a problem and one I wanted to discuss. I've seen it less so in the Ruby world mainly because front-end is much easier to master and slower moving. The Ruby world is less forgiving - remember Yehuda's heckling earlier this year.
So I wrote a post about what I felt was a serious matter and you decided that you had read one sentence and it offended you because of your snap judgement that you knew who I was. You decided that I know nothing about design based on your subjective knowledge (and looking at your Geocities-style abomination of a website - this doesn't help you any further) and the fact that I am dyslexic and perhaps don't always get the words that I want to say out correctly. It was a needless comment that held no value to the thread, to the subject matter or anything.
If you had said "This content is hard to read. I wish the author would rewrite it" then I would have acknowledged that and even perhaps done that. As I have done once before. Instead you tried to act clever (even failing the mark on one of the corrections.)