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Comment by RuadhanMc | Hacker News Reader

Why should they?

Just because someone posts a benchmark that is obviously flawed, doesn't mean that someone else should be obligated to do their own benchmark as a counter.

These guys didn't ask for node.js to be used in any benchmark.

The onus is on the person who chooses to do a benchmark, and publish the results, to get it right. If they don't get it right, then they are in the wrong and deserve the criticism that they get as a result.

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Because it's like complaining about the weather. It doesn't do anything to make things better. I think there's too much negativity on the Internet already.

To some extent this is like a peer-review. If I submit a paper to a journal, should my response to all criticism be, "Well, if you think I didn't do the experiment right, then you do it!"

There is too much negativity on the Internet, but there's also too much of just about everything else. The ease of publishing on the Internet means that people don't think too critically about their work prior to publishing it.

For example, if these guys were publishing this benchmark as part of a study or argument in a quarterly magazine -- and this was there only opportunity to publish it for the next year or so -- then they would have been far more critical of their own work prior to publishing it. Instead they've quickly thrown together something and pushed it onto the Internet without too much further thought.

So long as it is civil, criticism is fine.

I don't think the comment I originally responded to was particularly civil. It was quite smug.

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