I have seen grammar and spelling comments given in the spirit of helpfulness, but this was not one of them, and adds nothing.
My comment adds very little more than that, but I'd like to remind people that many very smart engineers and business workers have a terrible grasp of formal English, yet they get the job done and more. WalterBright's comment was short, but pointed to more information, and was a potentially useful comment. The discussion should be about the content of his comment.
The fact that he used the wrong word is virtually irrelevant, we all knew what he meant. Yes, if you have a strong grasp of formal English you do make yourself seem more credible, especially in a formal context. But it's not the thing to focus on. Not here.
S/N on HN is amazingly high, but it is still a casual forum, and we should all cut each other generous slack.
derleth, I can't reply to your reply to the above reply. (Follow?)
As I pointed out, you have edited your reply, with no indication that it was edited.
Your original reply was not helpful. You were taking the opportunity to ridicule someone, with sarcasm. Your current version (assuming no further edits) would at best have no downvotes. Your original version deserved every downvote it got (none of which were supplied by me).
I assume you yourself know this, otherwise you wouldn't have done the edit.
EDIT: added the following: "I'd understand this better if people didn't always pick the longer word when the short one would be correct."
The fact that one word is shorter in this case is not what made the original usage wrong. Length had nothing to do with it. It was merely wrong.
You didn't even tell him the right word -- if you wanted to help him learn English, you might say something to the effect of:
queue -- noun. A first-in, first-out data structure, such as a supermarket line, or processes to be scheduled naively.
cue -- verb. To prepare for, to bring up, to introduce, typically used as a command. Also noun. an indication that it is time to do something, cf. "that's our cue!". Also used in the phrase "on cue", meaning timely.
The thing that bugs me here is that if you honestly consider it, in some situations either word could be used for more or less the same effect.
For example: "Cue the complaints". Surely "Queue the complaints.", meaning that the complaints should start lining up, gets across the same meaning (which is of course "oh great, here come complaints").
This doesn't always work of course ("That's our queue" has an entirely different meaning), however where I see most complaints about "mis-usage", either actually works.
But that's simply invalid English, as 'queue' is a noun, not a verb. Enqueue is the verb form, and nobody would ever say, "enqueue the complaints." :-)
My comment adds very little more than that, but I'd like to remind people that many very smart engineers and business workers have a terrible grasp of formal English, yet they get the job done and more. WalterBright's comment was short, but pointed to more information, and was a potentially useful comment. The discussion should be about the content of his comment.
The fact that he used the wrong word is virtually irrelevant, we all knew what he meant. Yes, if you have a strong grasp of formal English you do make yourself seem more credible, especially in a formal context. But it's not the thing to focus on. Not here.
S/N on HN is amazingly high, but it is still a casual forum, and we should all cut each other generous slack.
Written with helpful intention. :)