> There is a tendency for something to seem "easy" or "obvious" after the fact, but this is ignoring all the insight, effort, and risk it took to find that initial successful path to the solution to begin with.
He carefully said "without ever reading the patent" to avoid your counter-argument.
My point had nothing to do with the particulars of a supposed patent. Just knowing it can be done is a non-trivial obstacle in solving a problem. Add onto that general information that's usually discussed in relevant circles, and you may have enough information to "recreate" the solution to the problem. Judging the difficulty of a problem from this vantage point is the flaw I was referencing.
There are vastly different values for "knowing something can be done".
Consider: Knowing we could get a man to the moon and back pre-1960s vs. knowing we could implement "bounce scroll" on a cellphone.
The latter example everyone who is a programmer "knew" prior to the iPhone even if they never actually considered it... because the implementation of it is so amazingly obvious. It is nothing but a good idea, and good ideas aren't supposed to be patentable. Which isn't to say they don't get patented, but that's a side-effect of how fucked up the patent system has become in the past 2 decades, not representative of what patents are supposed to be.
He carefully said "without ever reading the patent" to avoid your counter-argument.