Not to diagnose your friend, but more as a general note: that kind of perspective sounds (from my admittedly unqualified perspective) much more typical of people on the autism spectrum or certain other non-neurotypicals than it does of "smart people" in general. It might be worth noting that there's some (mostly-anecdotal) indications that tech, particularly programming itself, may have higher incidence of people on the spectrum than other fields.
His friend might not be on the autism spectrum, and it would be blatantly irresponsible to claim he was based on such limited evidence with no qualifications - which is why I didn't.
Rather, I stated that that kind of mindset is usually more common in individuals on the spectrum. It is, in fact, one of its most common and defining features - even if, on its own, it's not sufficient for a diagnosis. It's relevant to the discussion, even if it's not relevant to his friend in particular.
What further qualification could I have added to make myself clearer? I definitely don't want to be encouraging lazy net-diagnoses, as they're harmful to the people who have such disorders, so I'm genuinely curious how you would rather I have phrased this.
You could not have qualified that statement more. It's just hard to communicate ideas because the response prediction engine we build in our minds operates with a high degree of uncertainty.
