Is 'Grammarly' really that good? [closed]

Question

I've been using this software for quite some time now. Not once until yesterday did I question the authenticity of its 'Grammar Check' reports.

Yesterday, I tried to test Grammarly with a piece of writing by Bertrand Russell from a Routledge compilation of his called 'Why Men Fight'. I've been a loving reader of Russell since childhood.

Grammarly reported 26 writing issues in the following text. The following piece was awarded a little over 50 points out of 100. I don't have anything else to say. Do you think that software like Grammarly can ever be precise?

Lay on, Macduff, And damned be him that first cries, Hold, enough!

But such strength and recklessness of impulse is rare. Most men, when their impulse is strong, succeed in persuading themselves, usually by a subconscious selectiveness of attention, that agreeable consequences will follow from the indulgence of their impulse. Whole philosophies, whole systems of ethical valuation, spring up in this way; they are the embodiment of a kind of thought which is subservient to impulse, which aims at providing a quasi-rational ground for the indulgence of impulse. The intellectual impulse of curiosity, leading to the desire to know and understand. But most of what passes for thought is inspired by some non-intellectual impulse, and is merely a means of persuading ourselves that we shall not be disappointed or do harm if we indulge this impulse.

When an impulse is restrained, we feel discomfort or even violent pain. We may indulge in impulse in order to escape from this pain, and our action is then one which has a purpose. But the pain only exists because of the impulse, and the impulse itself is directed to an act, not escaping from the pain of restraining the impulse. The impulse itself remains without a purpose, and the purpose of escaping from pain only arises when the impulse has been momentarily restrained.

Answer 1

You can find a practical test of Grammarly, by Grammarist, here. Their conclusion? "Grammarly doesn’t work. As the above results show, Grammarly did not catch several of our intentional grammar and spelling errors, it had nothing to say about any of our intentionally misused words, and it makes recommendations based on 19th-century grammar superstitions."

Another practical test can be found at The Economist, which also concludes that "Grammarly has utterly flailed in the tests here."

I did find the suggestion of 'Stygian South Africans' quite delightful though: "...none of "Stygian", "unhealthy", "despairing" and "terrible" are particularly good synonyms for "black" when you are talking about black South Africans."