[kvinnako]

This is such a rude comment. This comment is basically like putting salt on the injury. You are talking about coding when these people don't actually have a place to stay and/or good food to eat. You have spoken like a true 'born with a silver spoon and never knew what poverty really is like' guy.

[ericd]

I'm fairly sure it was sarcasm, since that's sort of a kneejerk reaction that coders have to people with issues, and in this case it's completely absurd.

[potatolicious]

We've seen the idea floated non-sarcastically on HN. I think it's troubling that in our community a statement such as this has uncertain seriousness.

It makes me wonder the thorough and complete disconnection from reality that much occur for someone to suggest this sort of thing seriously.

[ericd]

Yeah, you're right, I've seen it too.

I've noticed that techies have a tendency to drift into absolutist thinking, probably because we're so isolated from mainstream society, so our brains, being the wonderful bayesian-esque learning machines they are have relatively a relatively small sample of non-diverse data on the subject. And the abstract world we work in is artificially absolute. And maybe it's partly the type of person that's drawn to this field.

Which is just a complicated way of saying that we're often really crappy at modeling the real world in our heads unless we've forced ourselves to get out there and gather some experience.