If I need to change someone's code, I also read it. several times.

It's obvious from the context here what the intended meaning was. Everyone makes typos sometimes.

Not everyone has English as a first language.

Man it would rule so much if programmers could manage not to be assholes by default so much of the time.

It's ironic that the more ignorant one is the one calling another ignorant.

Alright I've had my fun with the name-calling. I will now explain the stunningly obvious. Not a thing anyone should have to for someone so sharp as yourself but there we are...

For someone to produce that text after growing up in an English speaking environment, they would indeed be comically inept communicators. Which is why the more reasonable assumption is that English is not in fact their native language.

Not merely the more generous assumption. Being generous by default would be a better character trait than not, but still arguably a luxury. But also simply the more reasonable assumption by plain numbers and reasoning. So, not only were you a douche, you had to go out of your way to select a less likely possibility to make the douche you wanted to be fit the situation.

Literate programmers indeed.

I was thinking in situations where a coworker might send me something to review, and I might have thought "hmm, I wouldn't have done it like that, but this is a great way to do it too". Also, a good source of teachable code is to participate in a programming contest, and then review the repositories of the teams who scored better than me after the contest.

I agree that if I don't already know how to implement something, seeing a solution before trying it myself is not great, that's like skipping the homework exercises and copying straight from the answer books.

This is why tutorials in programming don't really teach much because you get the finished version. Not all the wrong steps that were taken, why they failed, what else was tried.

These steps are what help you solve other issues in the future.