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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

As a representative (?) of a popular library, it's not a great look to come in and put-down someone's Show HN project. Especially when you're also dismissing the entire category of libraries as inferior, while the reality is that both approaches have different costs and benefits

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Is he putting it down?

He's arguing about speed and saying why the approach of lit-html will always be faster than virtual dom.

I think it's fair since OP is trying to get a faster vdom to also expect discussions about different approaches and I'm glad the previous user gave his two cents.

Relevant post: https://status451.com/2016/01/06/splain-it-to-me/

There are two common social perspectives: information sharing vs emotional harmony. From one perspective, the other seems rude or insane. If your message is corrected or added to, this is a chance to be less wrong. But it is also a chance to be embarrassed and seen as less knowledgeable than you seemed.

Status seekers tend to assume the latter perspective, and therefor label such comments as rude, dismissive, conflict-seeking, etc. even if the OP had no such intention.

This is also 95% of what "help i'm being harassed online" comes down to.

Oh this explains so much. I've been raised in the optics that one should always share information in order to make the world better, didn't even think there were other reasons to, like, talk in public.

Since you’re not aware, a very common reason to talk in public is to gain something from one’s talking. The situation at hand looks a lot like that, and in particular gaining something at the expense of someone else in this case. If every ShowHN ended up directing everyone to an alternative project, no one would bother making Show HNs. Hence why it’s questionable about whether the top comment makes the world a better place, etc. That’s also why someone not apparently related to the library at hand could make the same comment without it being negatively received because they don’t appear to have anything to gain from it. I would instead encourage the poster to make their own Show HN the next day rather than hijacking an existing Show HN.

While I agree in general (there are better/faster approaches than virtual dom), it’s not very relevant to a Show HN about React-compatible performance improvements. Lit is not compatible with React, as far as I know. If there’s a claim that Lit’s approach can be compatible with React’s API, that would be a different matter.

To me this makes the comment come off as hijacking the thread to promote their own library, which really is quite rude. Not claiming this was spankalee’s intent, but you see this quite often on HN, people who keep mentioning their own product or library in barely tangentially related discussions.

It came off to me as "VDOMs as a whole are obsolete and a waste of time, including your project that you're excitedly showing us, so you should just give up on it". Which isn't just insensitive, it's not even really correct. There are much better ways this alternate approach could have been brought up for genuine discussion if that was their goal.

I don't know, it seems pretty common for people to be straight up on HN. I didn't get a sense of superiority or insult from the comment - just statements that the author believes to be true.

I know that HN believes it’s immune to this, but being right isn’t an excuse to forgo social expectations

Different social environments have different social expectations. HN has a social expectation that focusing heavily on technical considerations of how something can be done better will lead to pleasant shop-talking like OP's response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576634#31578949

> I know that HN believes it’s immune to this, but being right isn’t an excuse to forgo social expectations

Could you please offer some insight on why trying to pass off technically wrong claims in a technical forum should be immune to any informative comment clarifying or clearing up misconceptions ?

> why trying to pass off technically wrong claims in a technical forum should be immune to any informative comment clarifying or clearing up misconceptions

Not really, because I didn't make that claim, so you'll have to ask someone who makes that claim.

> Not really, because I didn't make that claim, so you'll have to ask someone who makes that claim.

Well, you actually did. You claimed, and I quote, "being right isn’t an excuse to forgo social expectations"

I'm now asking you to explain the role your "social expectations" have on "being right", specifically in the case where someone in a technical forum makes technically wrong claims.

Are you able to shed some light onto this sort of belief?

> Well, you actually did. You claimed, and I quote, "being right isn’t an excuse to forgo social expectations"

That is a very different claim than “trying to pass off technically wrong claims in a technical forum should be immune to any informative comment clarifying or clearing up misconceptions”.

It is possible to be right without posting an “informative content clarifying of clearing up” a “technically wrong claim” and it is possible to “informative content clarifying of clearing up” a “technically wrong claim” in a manner which does not disregard social expectations.

Being right neither requires nor excuses being a jerk.

The irony of being weirdly combative about the anodyne observation that "being right isn’t an excuse to forgo social expectations".

You can be right without the other person being wrong if you aren't addressing something they said.

> (...) to come in and put-down someone's Show HN project.

There was no put-down. There was a very informative and insightful post explaining that a) unlike the original claim, the project does not use a virtual DOM, b) the technique used is indeed very performant and hard to beat, c) other projects also use it.

You need to go way outside of your way to pretend to feel any sort of outrage over this.

The put-down to me was where it said: "it's very easy to...", but failed to explain it beyond a few words. I'm relatively clever, but don't know exactly what they are talking about, and the lack of explanation with a statement of ease gives an implication that we should just know their solution.

That changes the message from an informative comment about alternative approaches into something the could be read as a dismissive rejection.

Now, a link to an article explaining the alternative approach... or even just one or two more explanatory sentences... would not come off that way. And maybe it is easy, but it would be better to just put up the facts, not judgments. Post an explanation and let the reader decide whether or not they think it is easy.

> The put-down to me was where it said: "it's very easy to...", but failed to explain it beyond a few words.

What do you mean by "failed to explain it beyond a few words"?

OP stated in no uncertain terms that this approach was followed in lit-html, provided a link to a page from lit's site where this approach is thoroughly explained, and if you really want to look closely at real-world implementations you already have the link to lit-html.

How much more do you want to demand from someone in order to point out in a web forum that someone made a mistake?

Also, what stops anyone from posting any question asking for ay clarification?

Or are we supposed to jump right onto the "I'm being persecuted" mode?

I find it comical that you make this comment when your previous 3 comments you've done exactly what you're accusing OP of.

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