Dude... an argument can certainly be made that English evolves by consensus; you're right about that. At the same time, that doesn't mean anything goes! It perhaps would be going too far to say that something is "correct" or "incorrect" English. But we can certainly give a proposed fragment of English a score measuring how well it matches the current consensus regarding what is a valid sentence in the language. Now,
> while others' poor experience is a result of their more layman writing style.
would receive a low score: "Layman" is not a noun commonly used as an adjective where common is relative to the overall usage of "layman".
While I am aware that there's prior use (centuries ago even) "layman writing" jumps at me a lot less than current use of things like ask, spend etc as nouns.
This is an incredibly amusing hacker news interaction. You are 100% in the right in terms of having a breadth of accurate and passionate knowledge about your topic and it being relevant to the discussion @chowells
