The Necessary Talent
lrb.co.uk
lrb.co.uk
For what it's worth, what I did learn from reading this article is that it takes a "necessary talent" to understand the talent behind a work. The lay person, that person without talent, might be the kind who thinks, "I could paint that. The artist didn't even get the cheeks right" without even realizing the artist intentionally painted the cheeks that way knowing and resisting the urge to preemptively counter criticisms about said cheeks.
Maybe it's my old cynical self, but by this time in my life, I know most people don't have the capacity or experience to understand the amount of thought that goes into a work of art or architecture or ... software.
Perhaps the whole point of this article is to waste time learning something you already know.
The Hacker News ranking algorithm penalises lots of comments. Posts stay near the top precisely because they do not have comments.
People tend to leave comments when they disagree. It's easy to disagree; it's harder to agree while also adding something interesting to the conversation.
Having too many comments relative to the votes can apply a penalty at some point, as a flamewar detector.