In this particular context there is no significant difference, but in other contexts there may be.
X such as A,B,C... has two significantly different uses. The list A, B, C may be either
- restrictive: a qualification of X which may not omitted, as if to say only or specifically those X which are like A, B, C
I prefer playwrights such as Ibsen, Shaw and Brecht to playwrights such as Wilde and Maetrlinck.
non-restrictive: an incidental illustration of X, as if to say for example A,B,C. When this use is intended, such as A, B, C is set off with commas or parentheses.
I prefer politically conscious playwrights ，such as Ibsen, Shaw and Brecht ，to mere
aesthetes ，such as Wilde and Maeterlinck.
Such X as A, B, C..., however "embraces" the X modified within the construction, and thus cannot be used non-restrictively.
OKI prefer such playwrights as Ibsen, Shaw and Brecht to such playwrights as Wilde and Maetrlinck.
BUT NOT
✲ I prefer such politically conscious playwrights ，as Ibsen, Shaw and Brecht ，to such mere
aesthetes ，as Wilde and Maeterlinck.
Note that such can act as a pronoun, so you may if you like drop the second instance of X:
OKI prefer such playwrights as Ibsen, Shaw and Brecht to such Ø as Wilde and Maetrlinck.
In my own writing I mark the restrictive/non-restrictive distinction a little more systematically by using X such as A, B, C... only non-restrictively; but I doubt anybody notices, and you are by no means bound to follow my example.
✲ marks an utterance as unacceptable
Ø marks the point at which a term has been deleted
I'm a native speaker of British English and believe that "such things as" is less likely to be used in a spoken context. Naturally I would tend to list out a few things such as a,b or c and rarely if ever have I ever said "such things as". I think that is something to be found in formal literature.
However they are both correct and accomplish the same goal it just depends on how technical the author wants to get.
I found this very relevant thread on wordrefrence which gets into the syntactical difference. I hope this helps :)
Best Answer
Unless there's a uncommon usage that I'm not familiar with, I'd say it's wrong. When I try to make sense of the following:
I can't think of anything that would make sense. We can say:
but that's not following the to part of your pattern. Or we could say:
but that misses the in part of your pattern. So I doubt that it's correct to use it the way your friend suggested but you're not far off.