I don’t count it as lying unless there is intent behind it. But it is certainly true that many people’s deeply held beliefs are not as true as they think they are, myself included obviously. The more experienced you get, the fewer absolute truths there are.
I think I agree more with the parent than with you, particularly in engineering.
Lying in engineering means saying anything that's not true with any certainty. I wouldn't hold it against someone, but I would ask them to think carefully before speaking, to make sure what they said is true, as it can lead meetings to decide the wrong actions if nobody present happens to be able to contradict it.
Outside of engineering, all the same outcomes can occur, but proving the truth is much more difficult. And thus, while it may still technically be lying, it is impossible to tell and unfair to call someone on it.
Lying in engineering means saying anything that's not true with any certainty.
It’s funny because that’s exactly an example of what I mean. Real engineering is about compromises and those are highly subjective. What’s the feature we should work on next? What tools should we use? What’s the priority of this bug? Should we refactor this today or take on more tech debt? Ask 10 people and you will get 10 answers, all of which are just as true as any other. Recognising this comes with experience.
Those are all things that fall into the second category (subjective stuff I wouldn't call lying). But saying that something works in X case when it doesn't (or even when you don't know for sure), and everyone estimating four stories based on that assumption, is a big problem.
