Why are types sometimes interchangeable

[VisualLab]

- a private project started by a hobbyist (then, because LT has not been a hobbyist for a long time),

A student in computer science can hardly be called a hobbyist even if he pursued something as if it was a hobby. As many proper scientists do...

By "hobbyist" about LT, I meant that he was doing it back then:

• for your own satisfaction,
• nobody paid him for it,
• he did it in his spare time.

Hobbyist doesn't have to mean layman. There are a lot of guys who do things for their own satisfaction, such as tinkering with a motorcycle or electronics. Usually, most of the wives of such guys complain then: "you are wasting time on this hobby, although there is no money from it"

LT was tinkering around with the OS. Perhaps his wife didn't complain at first, since LT still does it today

[MarkMLl]

By "hobbyist" about LT, I meant that he was doing it back then:

• for your own satisfaction,
• nobody paid him for it,
• he did it in his spare time.

Hobbyist doesn't have to mean layman. There are a lot of guys who do things for their own satisfaction, such as tinkering with a motorcycle or electronics. Usually, most of the wives of such guys complain then: "you are wasting time on this hobby, although there is no money from it"

LT was tinkering around with the OS. Perhaps his wife didn't complain at first, since LT still does it today

I agree, but I really don't think it's worth quibbling about (please :-)

When Luis Alvarez worked with his son to describe the K–T Boundary, I'm sure that almost everybody would have described it as a hobby activity since he was neither a geologist nor a paleontologist. And when he invented a novel type of variable-focus spectacle he was neither a practicing optician nor an optometrist. But that doesn't detract from his achievements.

MarkMLl

[Thaddy]

Atm he was not married 

[Joanna]

And if you insist on attacking Linux (or unix in general) with that sort of misinformation you come very close to suggesting that all open-source projects are unsafe because of their acceptance of code from unknown contributors. Which is a suggestion that has no place in this forum.

I am not attacking linux but you are most certainly attacking me. Don’t you have anything better to do than misinterpret everything I say? 
Thanks for finding my typo, you are amazing.

I, for one, have not encountered a case of someone suggesting advice on Linux forums that would actually be malicious. And I started using Linux in 1999 (of course, there are many forums and a single person doesn't have the chance to look into all of them)

I’ve never been to linux forums. I heard the story about malicious advice in an essay about avoiding irc burnout. I guess people got so annoyed with too many newbie questions that someone had given bad advice on purpose out of spite. 

Just because someone uses a particular Language or operating system doesn’t make them a saint and not everyone in a channel represents a community necessarily. There can be people trying to discredit it.
Also people have shared innocent looking linux commands that can do a lot of damage with me so I’m not making this up...

[VisualLab]

I agree, but I really don't think it's worth quibbling about (please :-)

It's just clarification of concepts and positions as part of the discussion

Atm he was not married 

Indeed, he was probably not yet married at the time.

[circular]

Started separate topic on units of measurement:
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,61958.0.html