And that's fine.
People can build and release their projects without necessarily having to build the best-in-class version of whatever it is. This is a useful, well-written, open source app that someone has taken to the point where they're willing to put it out there for the world to use, and that in itself is well worth discussing and celebrating (as much as a handful of upvotes on HN can be a celebration of something).
To be honest, even if it was much lower quality code that would still be really good. HN is all about startups and the release-early-release-often approach to building. This is exactly the sort of project that deserves to be on the front page, and exactly what I want to be reading about here.
Congratulations to the author.