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Because HN users tend to be interested in niche but powerful languages, they are not to be trusted to know programming in general?

Weird argument to close an otherwise excellent comment. I'd rather listen to the opinion of someone that also knows niche things, than one that only knows the mainstream and nothing else.

Also which group is more likely to create beautiful products such as a portable Lisp machine?

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> Because HN users tend to be interested in niche but powerful languages, they are not to be trusted to know programming in general?

No, the parent comment meant that HN users are not a representative cross-section of programmers in general. This manifests itself, for example, in relatively niche languages being mentioned and discussed disproportionately often.

In other words: just because HN loves it doesn't mean everybody else knows it.

This is similar to the love HN has for autonomous driving. Most people outside here mostly despise the idea. So HN is not representative of society in general, But this doesn't mean the HN crowd is wrong.

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