So it's not merely HN criticism, this is a very common theme and having used all popular big name fronted frameworks myself extensively, I can also see why many people feel that way. Not gonna steer the discussion there, though, just came here to point out that it's not a niche opinion.
[1] https://2018.stateofjs.com/front-end-frameworks/overview/
I used Angular 5 on two projects last year and was quite happy with the experience.
I'm sure you can however find someone who feels just the opposite way.
All in all I don't think this affects the results too much though. For example Vue is also in one big bucket with 1.x still being a thing. Angular isn't the only one who's had a fair share of changes over time.
It has it's warts, but I still love it as it's productivity factor is off the charts. Tried getting into Vue but do not want to deal with the complexity of learning a build tool. Could not get routing to work in Vue with static files.