There's a time and place for profanity/verbal hostility. Feedback to a stranger on website UX isn't it, the perceived intensity level and level of anger is just dialed wrong. I wish pg would implement a filter for this kind of comment.
Honestly, I think it's a reaction to "Minimum Viable Product" overkill on HN.
The first 10 times it's OK. The next 50 times it gets less interesting. Once you're into three figures it really starts to grate. So you start to the MVP style posts. Which means those making MVP posts have to turn to a different strategy: the "interesting headline" blog post, to drive traffic to their site.
Oh, and I think that the older people here (and at 31 I'm probably one of them) are turned off by really blatant marketing..
More seriously,this is not a mere UX problem. This isn't a problem with colors not matching, with poor navigation, or with anything else.
Absent any other information, this site appears to be a way of fishing for email addresses. That's the long and the short of it.
I am not just a string to send messages to. I am not just a networking opportunity. I am not just an entry in your preferred database.
I am a developer, and I don't like it when sites treat me otherwise.
I thanked the author for his (very fast) response.
I'm sorry about the tone of the post, but frankly we can't let this dehumanization and arrogance towards users (and worse in this case, fellow developers) slide.
EDIT: Note also that, had he simply posted a good article (which it was!) without the shameless plug, I would've said nothing. If the plug had linked to a page that had anything other than email scraping, I wouldn't have complained. But the linked page was so offensive that it deserved calling out. Let this be a lesson for you startupy folks: don't cheapen a good thing with a bad plug.
Everyone here has something we could all criticize really harshly. I've got crappy UX design in some of my sites, I have personality flaws, you probably have some site with something very annoying to a user, etc., etc. but if I noticed it while reading something of yours posted here I wouldn't barge into the comments and call you out on it when it has nothing to do with the content of the article just like I wouldn't want you to do that either. If you absolutely must say something then let the author know privately and nicely. Good manners go a long way.
My intention isn't to sit here and say "hey look at this asshole, let's all pile on!". Not at all. There was just a discussion about this sort of thing last night (see the comments on the 16yo Indian girl who passed away for the reason that discussion was necessary) so it's up to everyone to try to stop it. Anyway, I'm sure you're a nice guy. I'm a nice guy. We're all nice guys so lets all chill and be friends okay? And I know I probably said some asinine and or dickish things in the past so I hope someone tell me when I've gone too far too.
Okay. Good. We're all friends again. Let's move on.