I don't know what a "tech-droid" is, but the Keil forum is a forum for Keil users - not a forum for Keil staff.

If you ask a question, the people who answers will be Keil users. If someone gives a bad answer, you are likely to see a correction from someone else.

"some arithmetic in fixed-point rather than float with satisfactory results"

You can do any arithmetic in fixed-point with superb results.

"see evidence that far too few actually do it because they aren't taught about conserving code space, hence, they don't even consider it"

Time for statistics. Exacly how many real C softwares have you seen? I'm not talking about source code pieces posted on any web forum. And I am not talking about any PC code you can find on the net. I'm talking about real code written by a professional developer who do know how to program in C and do know how to develop for embedded targets?

"After all, they're taught to program on machines with 8GB of SDRAM and floating point hardware."

That is obviously ridiculous, since schools are not know for having the latest hardware, and most developers out there have been developing for a number of years. If we say that it takes at least five years for a developer to become experienced, then the newest PC machines for writing reports may have had 1GB, while much of the machines may have had 256 or 512MB of memory and a Windows that would have gobbled almost all before you even started to write PC programs. However, the people learning to program microcontrollers would use either 40-pin chips or development boards looking quite similar to the development boards I have laying around me. Small flash. Small RAM. No FP. Quite possibly a processor without integer multiply or integer division instructions. For some projects, they would have been expected to write the code in assembler. For some projects, they would have been allowed to use C.

The biggest problem here is that you are not really grounded in reality. You live your life based on emotions, instead of hard facts. Anything you haven't tested is B.A.D. In an office, it isn't uncommon that people are using headsets with music to be able to isolate from surrounding talk and concentrate on the coding. But since you have never tried that, your view is that if you see a programmer with a headset, he is out the door as fast as you can throw him. In a dynamic world, you have to be able to see a problem from other peoples views too. If working as a consultant, it is even more important to listen to the customer, instead of bulldozing him.