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Comment by dejawu | Hacker News Reader

I'm kind of appalled that the Hashicorp guy went that far to put someone down for just building something they found useful to themselves. What a great way to discourage someone from expressing themselves creatively. Glad Aseem carried on regardless.

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I regret it! As Aseem said, I admitted fault and apologized for this. Here is an excerpt from an email I sent Aseem when he approached me about it (as he noted in his post).

> I’m sorry about it, I’m sure it was offensive in many ways. But while clear in hindsight, I certainly didn’t realize it at the time. Its not an excuse, but I was 21 years old at the time and my EQ was well… under-developed. I didn’t mean any harm, I was mostly having fun with it, and I’m happy to hear your project is doing well. Anyways, congrats on the success, sorry for the unkind gesture, I would never do such a thing anymore.

Aseem accepted my apology, and I'm very happy to see his project succeed the way it has! I obviously disregarded the project and he proved me (and many others) wrong!

I wouldn't want to work for some company whose founder can be openly toxic against a project that solves an actual problem.

Perhaps he's jealous as half of Hashicorp's portfolio only create more problems than you had originally...

This comment seems to be an example of the exact toxic mentality the author was complaining about.

Like Hashicorp products or not, the remark seems a bit petty.

How many years ago was this? I’m sure Mitchell has grown a lot and matured since then. Just like everybody else. He did something a little mean spirited. Maybe even something he regrets now. I think he deserves a little bit of grace.

An apology is powerful leadership. The resolution I've seen, slinking away as if it never happened, is pure cowardice.

I was 21 years old at the time. What I did was mean, I did apologize, I do regret it, and I don't think I would act this way anymore (to be fair to Aseem, he noted all this in his post). I went through various phases of my life where I was "a little mean spirited" and this is an example of it. Life lessons have changed me over time, but you can catch glimpses of it in moments like this.

More details in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32380944

Umm you can find burning trash in your backyard useful to yourself - but it's still polluting the neighborhood (eg. people using this crap in APIs or pulling down useless dependencies to get this). It's especially bad if you start promoting your practices and get your neighbors start doing this as well.

I completely understand the reaction and find his repo a very appropriate response.

This is a great example of how argument by analogy completely breaks down and just helps the author express their feelings.

But for a second it makes them feel smart.

Maybe expressing feelings about the topic, as a guess behind the motivation for the mocking repo, was my intention ? (like I said in the second part of the post)

Left-pad shitshow showed how relevant NPM dependency chain is as a measure of quality and what it does for the ecosystem. This is left-pad with added complexity to sneak in malicious code.

Why do you feel it will sneak in malicious code?

I'm pretty sure the reaction was caused by project's name and had nothing to do with discouraging creativity. If it actually presented itself as "something someone build because they found it useful to themselves", the HTML7 joke wouldn't make any sense at all.

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