zlacker

Hmm, I see, and I agree that it is very subversive to edit your comment without a mention. I think even just a single "edited" marker would be enough to cast doubt on the mismatch between comment and reply. It's also not a big deal to make comments uneditable after a reply, because the edit period is fairly small, and I don't think people actually use HN for "real-time discussion". Maybe it's interesting to see the rate of replies within the editable period of a comment?

Even then, I don't think your reply is correct in dismissing the claim. A charitable interpretation would be that the poster meant personality trait, not including programming skill. Even a very strict interpretation still leaves room for the poster's assertion, via this hypothetical:

- totality of traits used when determining programmer quality is 100%

- abuse tolerance is the most highly selected, at 10%

- programming skill is quantified by 90 different traits at 1% each

This would mean that people without programming skill would not become programmers, but the top trait would still be abuse tolerance.

Anyway, I feel this is getting highly nitpicky at this point, I don't feel the poster was trying to make a statistical claim, but rather just emphasize that they believe "abuse tolerance" is very important for programmers, which I don't find to be facially unsubstantive or "flamebait".

(disclaimer: I made several edits to this post as I was writing it out)