Thanks. It's important that projects are held to high standards, even if they're hard to achieve. Otherwise there'd be no pushback against pure pragmatism.
Many of the comments I see from him violate the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Many of his blog posts (4 out of the last 5 submissions from drewdevault.com) are ill-informed and angry rants about a technology or company. These discussions generate a lot of heat but little light; it’s not surprising that they are downvoted.
Having gone back and re-read many, I have to agree about most of the downvoted items though not all. I do agree with most of them though, so that's why I felt this way.
That being said, most of the comments I saw that could be considered to be breaking the guidelines do have substantial content, but are ended with/include non-negligible snark.
> Many of his blog posts (4 out of the last 5 submissions from drewdevault.com) are ill-informed and angry rants about a technology or company. These discussions generate a lot of heat but little light; it’s not surprising that they are downvoted.
None of these were posted here by ddevault. His statement about writing them is above, so presumably you've seen it already.
I would like to add, I use much of ddevaults software on a daily basis, and have found it to be some of the absolute best I've ever used. As such, I tend to give what he says at least a moment of thought.
I honestly can't understand why it would be downvoted otherwise.
Many of his subsequent posts have been fairly downvoted.
I think some of his downvotes are from people who have interacted with him elsewhere. His reply to one of my comments is why I’m using this alternate account.
His recent post about pkg.go.dev misrepresented the facts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24023998
He frequently takes an absolutist stance, often assumes negative intent, and is at best abrasive.
Here are some examples:
https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/issues/357
https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/issues/100
> I would like to add, I use much of ddevaults software on a daily basis, and have found it to be some of the absolute best I've ever used. As such, I tend to give what he says at least a moment of thought.
It’s your call but I would be hesitant to use anything by him. How would he respond if I report a bug or open a feature request?
> He frequently takes an absolutist stance, often assumes negative intent, and is at best abrasive.
I don't disagree about this. Having gone back and reread many of his comments, they do come across as aggressive, even if I agree with much of the contents.
> It’s your call but I would be hesitant to use anything by him. How would he respond if I report a bug or open a feature request?
I don't know to be honest. That being said, his absolutism/idealism make me a little more comfortable with using his software, as I can be reasonably sure it's being held to a high standard.