131–140 of 334 posts
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I don't think anyone pronounces it that way, because what everyone is saying is the word that is spelt "maintenance". If you were to actually pronounce the word that is spelt "maintainance", that is how it would be pronounced, with the stress on the "ain".
Bah. My bad. I confused the parties in the thread. I'm sorry for the noise.
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"Whom" is also almost impossibly archaic and no longer considered part of modern English (having almost completely fallen out of usage around the start of the 20th century). It survives almost entirely in discussions of when to use it and almost never appears in modern writing except as a demonstration of what linguists call a "prestige form". "To whom did you give it?" vs. "Who did you give it to?" the latter is mor…
Huh. Really? I use whom all the time, and most of my friends do as well. Granted, a) we're all snobs, and b) we don't use it in every case we should, but we still use it. Maybe we're part of this little post 2000 resurgence: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=whom&year_s...
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Dude, I so want to go there, apply, and write at the bottom of the page: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."…
Combining "not" with "and" or "or" leads to ambiguity - there are no operator precedence rules in spoken language. I remember a "eating and drinking forbidden in the lab" notice with "not (eat or drink) == not eat or not drink" scribbled underneath (in math notation).
Once again here on Hacker News we are talking about hiring procedures for technical companies. Many people find this topic interesting, because most of us have applied for a job at least once, and many of us have been in a position to recommend someone else for a job, or to hire someone for a job. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathere…
"This meta-analysis found that the validity of GMA for predicting job performance was .58 for professional managerial jobs, .56 for high level complex technical jobs, .51 for medium complexity jobs, .40 for semi-skilled jobs, and .23 for completely unskilled jobs."
Apparently having a high IQ is a better predictor of being a good business guy than a good hacker.
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In my view the ability to structure communications is important. I don't think that's the same as being a grammar nazi. For example if you have a zero tolerance policy for it's vs its, or for commas making things confusing, the framers of the US Constitution would fail the test. Not only is 'it's' is used as a possessive but try to parse this: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United State…
I don't know, I don't think your example sentence is particularly hard to parse, and I'm not a native speaker. But I have to say, even as a non-native speaker, I just can't understand whats hard about "its" and "it's" and "their", "there" and "they're" and it makes me cringe every time to read such mistakes (as does confusing "loose" with "lose"). That said, I don't expect perfection but if I read a text that is litt…
Article 1, section 10, clause 2:
"No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress."
I guess they won't be working at any of his companies.
Once again here on Hacker News we are talking about hiring procedures for technical companies. Many people find this topic interesting, because most of us have applied for a job at least once, and many of us have been in a position to recommend someone else for a job, or to hire someone for a job. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathere…
My train of thoughts: > Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Whoa. Who do you think you are - google? What makes you think I am going to sit through your grammar test? If I am agreeing to your grammar test, either you are one of the most desirable places to work for(never heard of you), or economy is about to collapse and this is the only job…
My issue is if you're unable to delineate between "it's" and "its" and it's the language you've been speaking natively for the past 25 years, I tend to doubt your ability to know what form of "const" to use in C++. At the very least, lack of proofreading suggests to me you might be rash with your code as well. Many disagree with me on this point of view, but routinely I've found that those that express themselves wel…
Eh, how about asking me about const-correctness than inferring from my use of "it's" and "its"? You know, you can actually talk about const-correctness instead of inferring from the grammar test.
> At the very least, lack of proofreading suggests to me you might be rash with your code as well.
It's hard to be rash with code if you aren't copy pasting. It isn't the same as posting comments on HN.
> And on a personal level I don't want to work with someone that communicates like a tween
As I already said elsewhere, you are assuming things to be binary when they are not. The spectrum between "liek dis if u cry everytim" crowd and "People with bad grammar should be hanged" people is quite wide.
> Quite frequently a non-native speaker will stumble upon what is written and be thoroughly confused.
Not an excuse for bad grammar, but a non-native speaker is fine with both "didn't go" and "didn't went". I don't see how he is going to be confused. Non-native speakers are confused when they encounter phrases, idioms and slangs they don't know. Fun exercise - ask an Indian if he/she would like to go out with you sometime. He/she would most likely say yes/no without understanding what you meant. Do you have any examples where simple grammar mistakes confuse non-native speaker? I am a non-native speaker, and am curious to know.
What it they are foreigners?
Reading English also requires a conscious effort, and reading poorly written English requires an even greater effort to parse the bad and incorrect clauses, something a native English speaker doesn't have to do.